ZEC establishes over 2 700 centres for mobile voter registration blitz

Source: ZEC establishes over 2 700 centres for mobile voter registration blitz | The Herald

Mr Utoile Silaigwana

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has established over 2 700 sites throughout the country for the first phase of the intensive mobile biometric voter registration exercise which begins next Tuesday.

ZEC had initially intended to start the blitz on December 6 last year but postponed it without giving any reasons.

The blitz, which will now be conducted in phases from February 1 to 28 and from April 10 to 30, will inform the delimitation exercise to set electoral boundaries for the 2023 harmonised elections.

ZEC chief elections officer, Utoile Silaigwana said the 2 713 registration centres would operate every day, including on weekends, between 7:30 AM and 5 PM.

“Only those who are 18 years and above qualify to register. Please note that the category of persons whose national IDs are inscribed “Alien eligible to register” should have long birth certificates that indicate
that they were born in or outside Zimbabwe but one of their parents are citizens of Zimbabwe or they were born in Zimbabwe and one or both of their parents are citizens of a Southern African Development Community country and that they were ordinarily resident in Zimbabwe on the day of the publication of the Constitution on 22 May 2013,” he said.

The mobile registration centres are on top of the 73 permanent registration offices countrywide.

The voter registration blitz is part of several pre-election activities that ZEC and other relevant stakeholders have lined up in preparation
for the 2023 polls.

One such stakeholder, the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, is preparing to conduct a national population census this year whose results would also guide the creation of new electoral maps and
boundaries to be used in 2023.

The population census is being held a year earlier specifically for that purpose.

In December last year, ZEC revealed that it had only registered close to 3 000 new voters during the course of the whole year. – New Ziana