ZESN Report on the 31 July 2013 Harmonised Elections
Unavailability of the voters’ roll and other
key election materials timeously brings into
question the fairness of an election. The use
of voter registration slips led to speculation
about the authenticity of the slips.
ZEC should be solely responsible for all
electoral processes, particularly the voter
registration processes.
Final lists of the voters’ roll must be released well in
advance in electronic and hard copy format to allow
the electorate to inspect the roll and any
stakeholders interested in auditing it.
ZESN recommends the use of a supplementary
voters’ roll and desist from using the voter
registration slips.
ZEC needs to start working on the operationalization
of the polling station voters’ roll using the 2013 voter
information gathered from the polling stations which
is easy to compile and increases transparency in the
voter registration process. Making the polling station
voters roll biometric will also increase transparency.
In addition, the voters’ roll should be accessible to
party agents so that as people vote they are also able
to cross out people who would have voted thus
increasing transparency.
The voters roll needs to be posted at polling stations
before the election during the registration to enable
ease of inspection.
The voter registration process has to be standardized
according to regional and international minimum
standards.
Adequate voter education cannot be
comprehensively conducted by the electoral
management body (ZEC) alone and should
be conducted well in time to ensure that the
electorate makes informed decisions.
Voter education must be done by ZEC and other
interested parties, such as NGOs, should conduct
voter education to ensure comprehensive
information is delivered and geographically covers all
areas of the country adequately.
There must be a clear distinction between the terms
civic education, voter education and voter information
so that stakeholders, particularly civil society, can be
sure of what they can say and teach.
Re-alignment and implementation of new
electoral provisions should be prepared for
adequately and done in time by the election
management body to avoid chaos (e.g. those
that characterised the special voting
exercise).
Publishing a final list of polling stations has to be
done earlier to allow the electorate and any
stakeholders to scrutinize their distribution note of
their locations.
The methodology, of special voting particularly the
logistical aspects of special voting needs to be
rreviewed to ensure the participation by every
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