Opinion / Columnist
Zimbabwe's valid voters roll
23 Jul 2023 at 11:42hrs | Views
There's a lot of misinformation and confusion in the public domain regarding the valid voters roll that is actually used for elections in Zimbabwe: by law, there's no consolidated national voters roll; no consolidated constituency voters roll and no consolidated ward voters roll that is used for any election.
Put differently, the presidential election is not conducted on the basis of a national voters roll; the constituency election for members of the National Assembly in Parliament is not conducted on the basis of a constituency voters roll; and the local authority election for ward councillors is not conducted on the basis of a ward voters roll.
By law, there's only one valid voters roll that is used for conducting all the three harmonised elections, and that is the polling station voters roll.
The all too important V11 Form is the polling station return, which is the only return [out of the five returns that are used in Zimbabwe's election, that is, V11, V23A, V23B, V23C and V23D] which is generated where the voters roll for elections is used.
When a voter gets to a polling station, he or she is given three ballot papers for the local authority election, National Assembly election and presidential election.
There's only one voters roll for these three elections, on which a voter's name is checked, and marked to show that the voter has voted, upon the voter being given the three ballot papers.
A voter can decline one or two of the three ballot papers, and in terms of section 56(3a) of the Electoral Act, where a voter declines a ballot paper, this must be recorded on a ZEC prescribed Form PE2005/AA.
Among other auditing reasons, Form PE2005/AA is critical for ensuring that ballots cast for presidential and parliamentary elections tally, and where they don't tally, Form PE2005/AA ZEC is used to explain the variance.
Monitoring this key aspect has always been a daunting challenge for untrained or poorly trained or simply incompetent and useless polling agents at polling stations and collation centres!
Put differently, the presidential election is not conducted on the basis of a national voters roll; the constituency election for members of the National Assembly in Parliament is not conducted on the basis of a constituency voters roll; and the local authority election for ward councillors is not conducted on the basis of a ward voters roll.
By law, there's only one valid voters roll that is used for conducting all the three harmonised elections, and that is the polling station voters roll.
The all too important V11 Form is the polling station return, which is the only return [out of the five returns that are used in Zimbabwe's election, that is, V11, V23A, V23B, V23C and V23D] which is generated where the voters roll for elections is used.
There's only one voters roll for these three elections, on which a voter's name is checked, and marked to show that the voter has voted, upon the voter being given the three ballot papers.
A voter can decline one or two of the three ballot papers, and in terms of section 56(3a) of the Electoral Act, where a voter declines a ballot paper, this must be recorded on a ZEC prescribed Form PE2005/AA.
Among other auditing reasons, Form PE2005/AA is critical for ensuring that ballots cast for presidential and parliamentary elections tally, and where they don't tally, Form PE2005/AA ZEC is used to explain the variance.
Monitoring this key aspect has always been a daunting challenge for untrained or poorly trained or simply incompetent and useless polling agents at polling stations and collation centres!
Source - Twitter
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