HARARE North legislator Allan Markham (CCC) has filed a High Court challenge against the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) seeking to compel it to provide the national voters roll in electronic format.
Zec has been refusing to release the electronic voters roll
saying that would compromise the security of its database.
Recently, Zec demanded a staggering US$187 000 from a local
independent election watchdog for the release of a hard copy of the voters
roll.
In an application filed at the High Court yesterday,
Markham cited Zec as respondent.
In his founding affidavit, Markham said during the period
February to April 2022, he analysed an electronic copy of the voters roll
prepared and released by Zec before the by-elections that took place in March
2022 and noticed several anomalies.
This prompted him to write to Zec drawing its attention to
various anomalies on the voters roll, and was advised that the electoral body
was in the process of producing an updated version.
“The electronic form
is portable and can be analysed with relative ease, while a hard copy of the
national voters roll will be cumbersome to hold (one hundred and eighty-seven
thousand pages) and practically impossible to analyse. In addition, it takes 30 days to print a copy
of the hard copy before an applicant who has complied with all the conditions
set by the respondent can have it. The choice, therefore, to procure an
electronic copy is both borne out of its being more affordable and easier to
obtain and analyse,” Markham said.
He said the voters roll was the first port of call for all
citizens who needed to understand the composition of the electorate and know
how many people are registered, and where they are so registered.
“The review of the voters roll also allows citizens to
appreciate if any registration potentially violates the principle of one-man
one-vote, that is double or duplicate registration. It tells you in combination
with other information, such as a census, the general information as to what
percentage of eligible people remain unregistered, allows efforts to establish
why and how their registration can be facilitated, an important part of the
exercise of any citizen's political rights.”
He said access to the voters roll allowed citizens to
exercise their political rights in terms of the Constitution.
“In order to
meaningfully participate in the delimitation exercise, one needs to know the
voters roll and where everyone is registered by polling station. Stakeholders
cannot be consulted on delimitation if they have no access to a searchable copy
of the voters roll so that they can check numbers per polling station and
boundaries.
“So the respondent is conducting the delimitation exercise
on its own "consulting" with stakeholders who have not seen or
accessed the voters roll yet. Put differently, the respondent is purportedly
consulting with stakeholders and effecting changes when stakeholders do not
have the voters roll. This is meaningless,” Markham said.
He said once a citizen has communicated to Zec and paid the
prescribed fee, the electoral management body is obliged to produce the
electronic voters roll.
Zec is yet to respond. Newsday
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