Preventing Electoral Fraud report SAIRR May 11 ... - AfricanLiberty.org

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give Zimbabwe a free and fair election requires his replacement by a properly neutral civil servant. The three parties in the current Zimbabwe Government – Zanu-PF, MDC (Tsvangirai) and MDC (Ncube) – have been and still are negotiating a Road Map to free and fair elections. The GPA requires that there must first be a new constitution, approved by a popular referendum. However, it would be difficult for a credible referendum to take place without a new voters' roll. To be sure, current legislation caters for such a possibility in theory, but in practice a referendum held when there is such controversy over phantom voters would be bound to be challenged. The earliest conceivable date for presidential and parliamentary elections following a proper referendum would be 14 th June 2012. Any difficulties in negotiation either at the level of the three negotiating parties, or at the level of the SADC, can only delay this date further. The Road Map is supposed to be endorsed soon by the SADC, by which time all contentious issues are supposed to have been settled. It is hoped that the present Report will assist in this process. However, the issues raised in this Report are not susceptible to last-minute fudges or minor alterations. They are not only fundamental but also require time. To draw up a new voters' roll from scratch will require months of work and considerable <strong>org</strong>anisation and expenditure. A new Registrar-General needs to be appointed and to work himself into his job, and a new set of personnel for the ZEC will need to do the same. If the Road Map is to succeed at all, these issues must be confronted and dealt with right away. 2
Full Report The Zimbabwean Voters' Roll as at October 2010 This Report on the Zimbabwean voters’ roll as at October 2010 is based on the work of many dedicated Zimbabweans over many years, who have laboured mightily over the voters' roll in trying to acquire it, turning it into readily usable form, and then analysing it. I would like to register my debt to all of them. Given past history, it will be understood that it was not easy to acquire a copy of the current roll. All I would wish to say is that this was indeed achieved, and I am deeply grateful to those who made it possible. However, for the usual Zimbabwean reasons, I am unable to name the people involved without jeopardising their security. The roll acquired was in digital ASCII (and thus computer-readable) format. It could thus be loaded into a database which also includes all the fruits of previous attempts to ascertain the truth about the voters' roll. The full details of the database are given in Appendix 1. Comparing the voters’ roll as of October 2010 with the roll used in the 2008 harmonised elections, we find that in 2010 there are 366,550 new voters who have not appeared on any previous roll. This is extremely surprising considering that the overall population of Zimbabwe has been falling due both to a very high mortality rate and large-scale emigration. It might have been expected, nonetheless, that there would be some new voters in the youngest age group of roughly 18 to 25. There is also a very unlikely total of 49,239 new voters over the age of 50 – and this when average life expectancy in Zimbabwe has fallen to 44.8 years. Even more surprising is the fact that 16,033 of these new voters are over the age of 70 years, while 1,488 of them are over the age of 100. The complete list of this 100-plus age group of new voters is appended. 1 Then again, a number of these new voters have no valid address, despite the stipulation requiring this. In the Gwanda Central constituency alone, there are three people without a valid address, for example. The age distribution of new voters is shown on the following table: 1 For new voters over 100 years old on the voters’ roll in October 2010, see Appendix 2. 3
Page 2 and 3: PREVENTING ELECTORAL FRAUD IN ZIMBA
Page 4 and 5: “The people who vote decide NOTHI
Page 6 and 7: FOREWORD Currently negotiators from
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Page 14 and 15: Table 3: Distribution of new nonage
Page 16 and 17: Equally incredible is the fact that
Page 18 and 19: However, to this must be added the
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Page 28 and 29: elections. In these exceptional cir
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Age as at 01/10/2010 Full list of r
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Have you ever heard of a voters' ro
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