'2 million voters removed from voters' roll'

More than two million voters who appeared on the 2013 preliminary voters' roll failed to find their way onto the 2018 biometric voters' roll (BVR), the Zimbabwe Elections Network (Zesn) has revealed.

Zesn, which fell short of giving the Zec voters' roll a clean bill of health, said the 2018 voters' roll was way better than that used in 2013 and could have resulted in the removal of the problematic ghost voters that hogged the limelight in that poll.

"Overall, Zesn finds that the 2018 voters' roll received on June 18 is an improvement over the 2013 preliminary voters' roll," Zesn chairperson, Andrew Makoni said.

"2 676 395 (45%) registrants on the 2013 preliminary voters' roll could not be matched by national ID number to the 2018 voters' roll and, therefore, are likely to no longer be registered. Over 2 470 156 (43%) of registrants on the 2018 voters' roll are likely to be first time registrants as their ID numbers are not included in the 2013 voters' roll," Zesn said in its findings.

"Overall, rural registration decreased by -436 457 (-10%) while urban registration increased by 230 218 (14%)," Zesn said.

The report raised red flags, saying over 5% of the registered voters using the same address were posted to different wards, which did not make sense.

"263 998 (5%) of registrants registered at addresses for which there are registrants are assigned to different wards.

All registrants with the same address should be assigned to the same ward," the report read.

Zesn, however, said they were unable to assess the impact of the deduplication process because of Zec's failure to provide them with an electronic copy of the 2018 preliminary voters' roll or the exclusion list.

"In the interest of transparency, Zesn encourages Zec to release these documents to interested stakeholders," the report read.

Zesn discovered that Zec had registered one person below the legal age of voting, with same ID numbers and three million whose details on the 2013 voters' roll have been changed.

"There is one registrant who will not be 18 by July 30, 2018, three born in the 1800s, 944 registrants who are 100 years old or older, 81 registrants (less than 0,01%) have duplicate national ID numbers and 4 693 registrants have duplicate identifying information surname, forenames, gender, and date of birth as another registrant. Of the 3 213 780 matched registrants on both the 2013 preliminary voters' roll and 2018 voters' roll, 126 689 (4%) had different dates of birth," the report read in part.

Zesn also called on Zec to avail an updated voters' roll because the commission had changed information on the roll.