via Makarau promises new voters’ roll for 2018 – The Zimbabwean 9.9.2015
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has not yet started national voter registration but will do so once it has learnt enough lessons from ongoing pilot projects.
“We haven’t set a date yet. But the 2018 general elections will definitely be conducted with a new voters’ roll,” The Chairperson, Rita Makarau, told The Zimbabwean this week.
The current voters’ roll is in a shambles. It contains the names of thousands of dead people, has not been updated and is fraught with inaccuracies. Despite numerous complaints from political parties and civil society, the roll has been continuously used for years, with critics saying Zanu (PF) has manipulated these anomalies to win elections.
Makarau said ZEC had conducted a pilot project in Marondera where a by-election will be held on September 19. The seat fell vacant when former provincial chairperson for Mashonaland East, Ray Kaukonde, was ejected from the party for allegedly supporting former vice president Joice Mujuru. “We will test ourselves in Marondera and when the by-election is held, we will look at our study to establish our successes and failures. The results of the study will be used to inform the national registration process,” said Makarau.
“We will subject our findings to public debate. Only after that will we be able to launch the national exercise that would then lead to free and fair election in 2018. We don’t want to come up with a flawed voter register so we will take utmost care to minimise errors and respond positively to the views of the electorate,” she said.
COMMENTS
What help does this give Zimbabwe? One simple question.
That sounds good. In this technology age a lot can be done electronically. Verification can be done by availing the roll to all voters and attending to comments. The present scenario where the voters roll is a privilege of the few will take the country nowhere. Keeping fingers crossed that zec is independent this time around. The past was very biased towards ZANU.
Its good to see that at least something is happening. We don’t want to see people being turned back again come election day.
People should be able to easily verify that they are registered or not before the elections.
makarau declared the 2013 election free and fair !!
the lessons she wants to learn are the ones taught by the master rigger of elections, mudede.
let zimbabwe embrace electronic voting using a persons national ID and other modern techniques and get away from mugabe’s shamwaris preparing a manual voters roll.
Can she deliver. She
learn from Thuli Madonsela
I could probably get the voters role for 2018 from Israel if I tried hard enough.
Yeah Right!!! – and Mugabe promised us 2 Million jobs !! In any case, what good is a voter’s roll (even a half accurate one) without any law and order?
What else can she say? Her track record is more telling..
Show us the current one.