ZEC removes more than 22000 deceased persons from voter’s roll

THE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission  (ZEC) has removed a total of 22 656 dead people from the voters’ roll, a process which members of the public can appeal against in cases where there are mistakes.

According to the electoral body, the routine removal comes ahead of the by-elections and harmonised elections which have been scheduled for 2022 and 2023 respectively.

This follows an outcry over the transparency  and independence of ZEC as over years the voter’s roll has been  a bone of contention with fears that it is often manipulated to suit the ruling party.

The removal was announced during a meeting with civic society this week where ZEC also announced that by-elections will be held during the first quarter of 2022.

So far Zimbabwe had a total of 133 elective by-elections at National Assembly and local authority levels which were  necessitated by deaths, dismissals from political parties and recalls from the National Assembly and local authorities.

ZEC spokesperson Commissioner Joyce Kazembe said the figure could change as the electoral body keeps receiving updates from the registrar general office which is in charge of registering deaths.

She called on members of the public to also approach to amend the list if there are errors and to also register more deaths which have not yet been captured by the RG’s office.

“Those figures are not primarily sourced by ZEC, we get them from the Registrar General. Once we are given, we go back to our voters’ roll to remove the deceased,” said Comm Kazembe.

“The statistics and figures provided by the RG’s office serve as a guideline to coming up with an authentic and accurate voters’ roll. We are going to gazette another batch soon so there is no need for people to fear that anyone is tempering with the voters roll.”

She also highlighted that the postponement of the voter registration blitz was to allow the RG’s office to issue ID cards to members of the public so that they  become eligible voters.

“The issuance of national identity and death certificate documents is a responsibility of the RG’s office which provides the statistics and figures of citizens that have obtained national identity cards or those that are now deceased,” added Comm Kazembe.