News / National
Chamisa in whistle-stop voter registration drive
10 Dec 2017 at 10:42hrs | Views
With under seven months to go until the 2018 general election, the first bus tour to convert the growing number of unregistered voters in Kuwadzana East in Harare is underway led by the local MDC MP Nelson Chamisa.
The whistle-stop tour is using open vans blaring Zimdancehall and digital music to attract the millennials as well as traditional music for the elderly. It has excited the electorate in Kuwadzana East to turn out in numbers to register under the ongoing biometric voter registration blitz.
It comes as electoral roll numbers have tumbled particularly among the young, and is seeking to shore-up voter drop-off rates that are ringing alarm bells.
"The modern politics demand modern-day tools and strategies to reach out to various sections of the population, the elderly we have traditional music such as Jah Prayzah, for the millenials we are playing Zimdancehall, digital music and ragga. We are doing something novel to get the constituency excited about voting," Chamisa told the Daily News on Sunday.
Over the past week, Chamisa's tour has interacted with as many potential voters as possible and urged them to register to take part in the upcoming 2018 general election.
The MDC MP said elections are the lifeblood of any democracy so it is a scandal that so many people cannot vote.
"If you are not registered to vote, your are part of the contributor to your misery. You can't be jobless and not be on the voters' roll, you can't be in a bank queue and not registered to vote, you can't be a citizen fed-up of one TV station and still not be registered to vote," Chamisa said.
The whistle-stop tour is using open vans blaring Zimdancehall and digital music to attract the millennials as well as traditional music for the elderly. It has excited the electorate in Kuwadzana East to turn out in numbers to register under the ongoing biometric voter registration blitz.
It comes as electoral roll numbers have tumbled particularly among the young, and is seeking to shore-up voter drop-off rates that are ringing alarm bells.
"The modern politics demand modern-day tools and strategies to reach out to various sections of the population, the elderly we have traditional music such as Jah Prayzah, for the millenials we are playing Zimdancehall, digital music and ragga. We are doing something novel to get the constituency excited about voting," Chamisa told the Daily News on Sunday.
Over the past week, Chamisa's tour has interacted with as many potential voters as possible and urged them to register to take part in the upcoming 2018 general election.
The MDC MP said elections are the lifeblood of any democracy so it is a scandal that so many people cannot vote.
"If you are not registered to vote, your are part of the contributor to your misery. You can't be jobless and not be on the voters' roll, you can't be in a bank queue and not registered to vote, you can't be a citizen fed-up of one TV station and still not be registered to vote," Chamisa said.
Source - dailynews
