74,021 people aged 100+ registered on Zimbabwe’s voters’ roll

Age distribution of over 60s

A preliminary report released by the Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU)  has found that 74,021 names on Zimbabwe’s voters’ roll are for people aged 100 and over.  The report, titled ‘2013 Vision – Seeing Double and the Dead‘ also found that there are 82,456 people registered who are aged between 90 and 100. These figures are quite amazing when you consider that average life expectancy in Zimbabwe is 34 for women and 37 for men, and in light of the fact that the World Health Organisation predicts that only 14.7% of people live beyond 60 in Zimbabwe.

This is just one massive question thrown up by the RAU’s audit of Zimbabwe’s voters’ roll – the same roll used in the discredited 2008 elections.

The researchers have not been able to determine whether the very large number of elderly people on the voters roll (over 17% of the roll comprises people aged 60 and over) are living or deceased. Under Zimbabwe’s repressive ‘Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act’ (AIPPA), the RAU was obliged to apply to the Registrar-General for an electronic copy of registered deaths. The Registrar-General is obligated to reply within 30 days of receiving the request – but he failed to comply with the law.

The audit highlights other irregularities. For example, the researchers also call attention to the large number of duplicate entries on the roll. Despite the fact that the Registrar-General has said “There is no way an I.D. number can appear twice in the same roll as alleged”, the researchers show that in some cases I.D. numbers, names, addresses, birth dates and all details are duplicated. Specifically: 182 564 instances of duplicate entries were identified where people were registered in two or more constituencies simultaneously. The report acknowledges that this is could happen, for example, if a person was registered in one constituency during one poll, and another a second time. However they point out that 66.7% of the constituency shifts (if this is what the duplicate entries are supposed to signify) occur in rural areas, and therefore do not reflect the typical rural-urban migration pattern that has taken place in recent years in Zimbabwe.

Comparison of registered voters per ward, and votes cast

Another interesting point revealed by the audit is with respect to the number of voters registered in a Ward, compared to the number who voted in the 2008 elections. Beitbridge East, for example, has 60 voters registered in Ward 3, but an astonishing 339 people cast their votes in that ward. (ZEC has still not released detailed counts for the 2008 elections, so the researchers used unofficial figures from the MDC to carry out this analysis).

If the voters’ roll is heavily inflated with the names of deceased people, or duplicate entries, then it creates a significant impact on where it is possible for free and fair elections to take place. The delimitation exercise, for example, is based on the numbers of people of voting age living in areas. The numbers of ballot-papers printed for a poll is also based on the registered voters on a roll. The potential for ballot stuffing is immense. Imagine, for example,  if at the end of a voting day a polling station (historically staffed by Zanu PF loyalists) finds itself with a few hundred surplus blank papers. How easy it would be to cast extra votes – or be instructed to cast extra votes – for a particular party.

The researchers conclude:

The current state of the voters’ rolls indicates that piecemeal repair is neither desirable nor practical. A re-registration process for the entire country before the next general election by an independent electoral specialist such as Waymark, is not only feasible but would be an important step towards ensuring democratic, universally acceptable and procedurally transparent elections in Zimbabwe.

The full RAU report is available for download at this link.

This entry was posted by Sokwanele on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 4:23 pm. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.