5.2. Voter Education In every election, voter and civic education are necessary to ensure that all constituents— men and women alike—understand their rights, political systems, contesting parties’ messages, and how and where to vote. For an election to be successful and democratic, voters must understand their rights and responsibilities, and must be sufficiently knowledgeable and well informed to cast ballots that are legally valid and to participate meaningfully in the voting process.2 Voter education is a resource intense exercise that ZEC has been unable to effectively deliver, and on a continuous basis, largely due to funding constraints. Section 239 of the Constitution gives ZEC the mandate of conducting and supervising voter education. Part IXA of the Electoral Act (sections 40A to 40F) goes further to give ZEC a virtual monopoly over the provision of voter education and imposes several additional restrictions on its provision by other entities such as Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) who can only engage in voter education at the invitation of the Commission. CSOs are required to print and use information that is provided for by the Commission in the form of flyers and posters. Organisations invited by ZEC to conduct voter education were required to provide four voter educators per ward. The methodology used is mainly door to door, distribution of materials and addressing community gatherings. Political parties on the other hand are permitted to provide voter education but are, however, constrained by lack of financial resources and technical capacity to deliver voter education. ZESN recommends that the Commission engages stakeholders in the formulation of innovative voter education programmes that can leverage on the limited funding that both the Commission and electoral stakeholders have access to. Voter education content and messaging should be broadened and not just focus on the mechanics of voting but should be about enhancing knowledge, changing values, attitudes, behaviours and demystifying and allaying fears associated with elections and voting. The curriculum used for voter education should also be responsive to emerging needs and knowledge gaps such as the legal provisions for assisted voters, and the role of traditional leaders. ZEC scheduled voter education for pre-polling in Mudzi constituency from 9 – 16 July, 2015, and deployed 40 voter educators (approximately eight voter educators per ward). At the invitation by ZEC, ZESN deployed a mobile team of four voter educators to complement the work of the much larger ZEC team. The ZESN team addressed over 1,500 people throughout the five wards. The ZESN constituency based voter educator was instrumental in securing opportunities for the ZESN team to address various community meetings whose scheduling coincided with the voter education period. The meetings included those organised by community leaders, sports events, and church gatherings. ZESN distributed 7,000 flyers which were translated to English (3,500 copies) and Shona (3,500 copies) to make the information more accessible to the voters. In addition 2,000 posters were strategically placed throughout the constituency. 2 Civic and Voter education: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/wps/publication/Chapter5.htm 9|P a g e