ed that few if any voters have been issued with voters registration certificates, it unlikely that many unregistered voters will in fact be able to vote in the forthcoming elections. Illiterate and physically handicapped voters The Bill will permit illiterate and physically handicapped voters to be assisted to vote by two electoral officers or employees of the Commission, rather than by the presiding officer of the polling station in the presence of a policeman, which is provided by the Act at present.32 Keeping the police out of polling stations is a good idea, as noted above, but it would have been better to allow incapacitated voters to choose whom they want to assist them. Postal voting There are large numbers of eligible voters outside the country. These people left the country either because of political persecution or for economic reasons, and many of them may not be able to return to Zimbabwe to cast their votes. The current Electoral Act does not allow for postal voting by such Zimbabweans and the Amendment Bill will not change that position. The current Electoral Act restricts postal voting to: • disciplined force members and electoral officers who will be absent from their constituencies on electoral duties; • Government officials who are absent from the country on Government service; • spouses of such persons. It is strongly recommended that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, in conjunction with appropriate external agencies such as the United Nations, should establish a system that allows all Zimbabweans who are outside the country and unable to return, to cast postal votes in the forthcoming elections. Several SADC countries use systems of postal voting and could provide technical assistance in setting up a postal voting system for Zimbabwe. Counting of Votes and Collation of Results The Bill makes several minor changes most of them useful to the way in which votes are counted and the results of elections are collated and announced. Counting of votes at polling stations Candidates and their agents will no longer be allowed to put their thumb-prints, signatures or seals on ballot boxes which are sealed in a polling station at the close of polling.33 According to the Bill’s memorandum, the new translucent ballot boxes have no space for additional seals or signatures. This seems an inadequate reason for abolishing a small but valuable safeguard against electoral fraud. When the votes have been counted at a polling station, the presiding officer will have to record them on a return and post them up outside the polling station before sending them to the constituency elections officer.34 And he will have to do so in the presence of the candidates and their agents. This will certainly go some way towards ensuring transparency in the counting process, so long as candidates and political parties are able to deploy agents at every polling station to witness the counting of votes. 32 See clauses 42 and 43 of the Bill. 33 See clause 44 of the Bill. 34 See clause 46 of the Bill. 15