Confirmed election candidates to get electronic voters roll

All candidates successfully nominated to contest in the August 23 general elections will be issued with an electronic copy of the voters roll, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) said on Tuesday, the eve of the sitting of the nomination courts.

The nomination court sits on Wednesday at 103 centres across the country to register candidates for the presidential, National Assembly, Senate and local authority elections.

Presidential candidates have to pay US$20,000 to stand in the elections while those seeking to contest for parliamentary seats will each part with US$1,000 and local authority candidates will file their nomination papers for free.

Presidential candidates must file their nomination papers at the High Court in Harare and National Assembly candidates will go to the provincial regional courts while those seeking to contest for local authority will drop their papers at council offices countrywide at no cost.

Addressing journalists the eve of nomination court sitting, ZEC chief elections officer Utoile Silaigwana said only electronic copies of the voters roll would be given to successful candidates, ending a raging row with opposition parties which have unsuccessfully gone to court demanding to be given the roll.

"Successful candidates are going to get copies of the voters roll. They will get them electronically," Silaigwana said.

He said ZEC was ready to receive nomination papers from aspiring candidates countrywide, although some candidates had used an advance filing system, including President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his main challenger Nelson Chamisa, leader of the Citizens Coalition for Change.

"Nomination court will sit tomorrow (Wednesday) at 10AM and close at 4PM. No nomination papers will be received after that," he said.

"The voters roll for the nomination court is ready; and is now at the various nomination court centres and there will be a search facility to check the nominees and the nominators in the voters roll of that constituency in which an aspiring candidates wishes to stand."

He said some candidates have been filing their nomination papers online since the process was opened.

"Yes, they are submitting but we don't have a specific number since they have been submitting at different locations," Silaigwana said.

For the presidential candidate nomination, there must be 10 registered voters in each of the country's 10 provinces to nominate anyone who aspires to contest.

"We want to advise candidates particularly those aspiring to be councillors to make sure that they are registered in the ward they want to contest in, in terms of the new delimitation boundaries so that they do not get disqualified," Silaigwana added.

When asked to confirm if Mnangagwa and Chamisa had filed their nomination papers already, as confirmed by their parties, Silaigwana was unsure.

"You can file papers well before nomination court sits but there is a process to confirm whether you qualify. So we can only officially say so and so is a candidate for the presidential election once the nomination court is closed, papers processed and made that announcement," he added.

At least 6,598,523 voters are registered to vote in the general elections, said Silaigwana.

Deputy chief elections officer Jane Chigidi said at least 12,000 polling stations will be set up countrywide for the election.

"As for the polling stations, we are looking at roughly 12,000 because we may need to split polling stations with more than 1,000 voters to enable everyone to vote on election day," she said.