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A report on the state of the mobile voter registration process
Election Resource Centre
May 07, 2013

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The Election Resource Centre (ERC) commends government efforts aimed at enfranchising the majority of Zimbabweans as the nation approaches crucial elections in 2013. With nine days after the state-supported decentralization of voter and civil registration started, the ERC has however observed some administrative anomalies, which have the potential to undermine the otherwise necessary process of registering prospective voters.

Whilst the process is continuing in some of the areas, the outreach is evidently yet to be witnessed in most electoral districts. In places which the mobile registration teams have visited a number of potential voters remain disenfranchised due to a myriad of challenges ranging from lack of publicity, inadequate time allocation, the cost of registration, limited civil registration services and difficulties in acquiring necessary documents like proof of residence. The foregoing challenges have the inevitable effect of excluding a significant number of eligible voters from the imminent general elections.

The process has also been affected by reports that there is disproportionate distribution of the mobile voter registration teams throughout the country's provinces, with observations that some provinces, with a high contribution to the national population have fewer mobile registration centres. Yet some with a low contribution to the national population have a high number of centres.

The ERC therefore calls upon the electoral authorities to immediately attend to the emerging challenges in order to enable all interested eligible voters to either register as such or inspect details of their registration in the country’s voter register.

The ERC is monitoring the mobile voter registration (MVR) process which started on the 29th of April 2013 and initially expected to finish on the 19th of May 2013. Through its volunteer networks and X1G (first time voters) mobile caravans, which are monitoring and complementing the process as well as providing information to the young people on the process throughout the country's ten provinces, the ERC is able to gather reports around the ongoing voter process.

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