ZESN - Promoting Democratic Elections in Zimbabwe
was lower than census data except for the 45-49
years age group. The audit of the voters' roll
seemed to indicate that young adults in urban
areas, in particular those aged 39 and below, were
under-registered compared to older generations.
In rural areas, the total number of registrants was
higher than census data in the 35-49 and 55-69
years age categories. About 86.3% of voters added
between the release of the 'provisional voters' roll
and the final voters' roll (10159 out of 11770) were
from Mashonaland West and 8.3 %of sampled
respondents in the voters' roll audit were not
known at the addresses given on the voters' roll.
A new voters' roll was used for the elections
following the Bio-metric Voters' Registration
(BVR) that was embraced for the first time in the
electoral process in Zimbabwe. The BVR exercise
was proclaimed, and commenced at District
Centres, in September 2017. The exercise ran in
four phases, from 10 October to 19 December
2017, before it was extended in a mop-up exercise
between 10 January and 8 February 2018.
Unfortunately, the BVR exercise was marked by
misinformation and the intimidation of registrants
by political actors who recorded serial numbers of
registration slips under the pretext that they would
be able to track voting preferences of individual
voters. Despite challenges that include the
proclamation of BVR dates before a voter
education exercise to inform voters about the
location of registration centres and the
requirements needed for one to register under the
BVR system; power challenges affecting the solar
powered kits in a cloudy and rainy season;
malfunctioning of kits, among others, the ZEC
managed to register a total of 5 695 706 voters
(79% of the eligible population), 3073190 of
whom were women (54%) and 2 622516 (46%)
men.
A “provisional voters' roll” (PVR) was available for
inspection between 19 and 29 May 2018. The ZEC
set up 10 807 Inspection Centres (ICs) and 2019
registration centres.
While ZEC laudably
introduced innovations to enable voters to easily
inspect the roll, for example the Unstructured
Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Short
Messaging Service (SMS), and a web-based
allocation, it was not possible for members of the
public to scrutinize the roll. At the end of
inspection, 4 770 405 people had checked their
registration details, 694 030 physically went to the
ICs, 819 935 used USSD *265#, and 3 256 440
verified through bulk SMSs sent out by ZEC. An
exclusion list produced by ZEC had a total 11 018
registrants with the following breakdown: 5
326deceased; 3 077 multiple registrations; and 2
615 people with incorrect identification numbers.
An analysis of the final voters' roll revealed that the
total number of registrants (5 695 706) was lower
than both the 2012 census data and the Zimbabwe
National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT) 2018
projections of the voting population (18 years and
above), i.e. 6 805 455 and 7 224 128, respectively.
However, the total number of registrants was
higher than census data in ages 40-49 years and
60-69 years, though the difference is rather
insignificant. On the Final Voters' roll (FVR), 3 201
447 registrants (roughly 54%) are female while 2
622 516 (46%) are male. The 30-34 years age
group accounted for the largest total number of
registrants at 781 227, followed by the 20-24 age
group at 780 903 registrants. In all age groups,
more women registered to vote than men. Also,
there were more rural registrants than their urban
counterparts, including for those aged 39 and
below. While 68.2 % registered in rural areas,
urban registrants accounted for 31.8% of the total
registrants. The total number of urban registrants
The Nomination Courts sat on 14 May 2018 to
receive applications from nominees for
presidential, National Assembly, and local
authority elections. The nomination process was
conducted in a peaceful environment and there
were efforts to open on time and close late at most
courts. However, despite having promised to do
so, ZEC did not provide the voters' roll before the
sitting of the Nomination Courts, placing a
question mark against the legality of the process.
Furthermore, this affected some nominees who
only realised on the day of the sitting of the courts
that some of their statutorily required subscribers
to their nominations did not appear to have lodged
claims to register as voters. Some other nominees
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REPORT ON THE 30 JULY 2018 HARMONISED ELECTIONS
ZESN