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New electronic voters’ roll makes inspection easier for Zimbabweans
Violet Gonda, SW Radio Africa
July 01, 2013

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A group of organizations involved in the pro-democracy movement have created a website with an electronic voters’ roll, after years of refusals from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to provide this service.

It is the same voter’s roll that ZEC has, and Zimbabweans from anywhere in the world can access it. All you need do is enter your ID number to check if you are registered.

The development comes after a preliminary report has been compiled, and will be handed to ZEC this week, which is a damning expose showing massive ballot stuffing in various constituencies around the country. The report shows there are significantly more people who have registered to vote than the actual population in many areas.

The MDC-T obtained a voters roll dated May 27th 2013 and it is believed it is this same roll that is being supplied by a coalition of civic groups to provide clear, simple and accurate voter registration information for the general public, as the country prepares for polls scheduled for July 31st.

Zimbabweans are encouraged to check the new www.myzimvote.com website and to take any queries or anomalies found to the relevant authorities, such as the ZEC.

Zimbabwean voters’ roll expert, Topper Whitehead, who was deported from Zimbabwe in 2006 after exposing how the former ruling party rigged the 2002 presidential election and subsequent elections, said it is a tragedy that ZEC has been reluctant to supply an electronic voters’ roll.

Whitehead is among the group of people who extensively studied the updated voters’ roll and gave this information to the organizations that will release the report to ZEC. He said the report reveals ‘mindboggling’ figures.

“Zimbabwe did a national census last year but if you compare that census with the voters’ roll in the various age bands, from 30 and above, there are more registered voters than there are people registered as far as the census is concerned,” Whitehead said.

The roll is said to have at least 5.8 million registered voters, of people over the age of 18. Zimbabwe’s population is 12 million according the recent population census.

Whitehead added: “When compared with the actual age bands you will see that there are more registered voters than there are people. It is frightening to see that there are some ghost voters on the voters’ roll.”

Tens of thousands of Zimbabweans have not been able to get to registration centres to check if they are on the voters roll and many have spent numerous hours trying to physically check. But if people have access to the internet, the group behind myzimvote say the website is a fast and convenient way to inspect the voters roll.

The website has been so popular that many people have had problems accessing it due to the large volumes of traffic to the website, that overloaded the server at one time. The organization said this problem has been dealt with and everyone should be able to check it at any time.

SW Radio Africa is Zimbabwe's Independent Voice and broadcasts on Short Wave 4880 KHz in the 60m band.

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