Respect My Right to Vote

The Zimbabwe electoral commission and the Registrar General’s office have been conducting a mobile voter registration exercise since June 10 2013, following the adoption of a new constitution by Zimbabwe in May this year.

The electoral body was mandated by the new constitution to conduct a thirty (30) day mobile voter registration exercise ahead of elections. The idea behind such an exercise is to ensure that all eligible voters are awarded the opportunity to register as voters and those already registered can inspect the voter’s roll in time for the elections. Such an exercise is done every 5 years in the run up to general elections. This year Zimbabwe’s harmonised elections have been set for July 31 although there are still some contestations about the date.

Despite the fact that voter registration is done on an ongoing basis in Zimbabwe, the mobile exercise becomes critical in bringing the process closer to the people rather than the centralised manner in which it is done any other time. However noble the idea of a mobile registration and inspection exercise might be, a number of challenges continue to stifle the process hence disenfranchising many eligible citizens. For instance before the mandatory mobile voter registration exercise, Zimbabwe’s electoral body conducted what they termed a 21 day trial exercise, which successfully registered more than 20 000 first time voters. This exercise was however marred by logistical confusion, poor administration and dire lack of publicity leading to a number of people failing to benefit from the exercise. As such, a number of lessons and recommendations came out of the exercise based on the loopholes than had been noted by various civic actors such as the National Youth Development Trust (NYDT). These recommendations were expected to be taken up by the Zimbabwe Electoral commission in executing the mandatory 30 day exercise.

However, observations made in the first 10 days of the exercise indicate that the challenges from the previous exercise are still recurring despite several engagement efforts with ZEC by different civic society organisations. Some centres are still failing to assist those who wish to obtain identity documents, referring them back to the registrar general’s central offices. In other centres, proof of residence remains a challenge despite ZEC’s proclamations that affidavit forms will be made available at the centres for those who do not have proof of residence. Additionally, the snail pace in which some officials at the centres are operating is resulting in some people either failing to register or walking out of queues to attend to other business, hence compromising their ability to exercise their right to vote.