Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) spokesperson Jasper Mangwana said ZEC registration officers have no way of verifying the addresses if the information on a sworn affidavit availed by potential voters is true or false.
Sworn affidavits are used as proof of residence where a potential voter cannot provide proof of residence required by the law and are signed by councillors, traditional leaders, Members of Parliament and house owners.
ZEC has faced criticism from political parties and elections watchdogs over anomalies on the voters’ roll which include non-existent addresses.
Posting on his Twitter page this Tuesday, Mangwana said some of the things that political parties are seemingly not happy with such as the proof of residence requirement were commissioned by politicians from across all the political parties. Wrote Mangwana:
Residence Requirements on voter registration. The proof of residence issue is a historical one dating back to the initial BVR blitz in 2016 when Biometric voter registration was introduced on the polling station specific voting.
Stakeholders led by political parties agreed that a lot of potential voters could not provide proof of residence required by the law which could be ZESA, Telone Bills, Letter from employer, bank letter etc and there was consensus that affidavits be used as proof of residence.
Consequently, in the rural areas, chiefs and headmen used and still use affidavits while in urban areas councillors, MPs and house owners use affidavits to assist people to register to vote. An affidavit is a legally binding document.
@ZECzim registration officer has no means of verifying if the information on a sworn affidavit is true/false. ZEC has no way of establishing the veracity of addresses supplied by way of affidavits. Some towns, cities& residential suburbs do not have street names.
Sec 28 of the Electoral Act gives power to voters to object to any voter registered by the Commission.
Voter Inspection was meant to ensure polling areas can check names and if there are any objections so that @ZECzim would work on them.
The solution is to prosecute the deponent of the affidavit for supplying false information to the commission as this is a crime of perjury.
The purpose of the voters’ roll inspection done for 10 days in July was to receive such objections from voters in different areas.
@ZECzim has made over 23000 corrections in the voters’ roll as proved by the gazettes and address standardization.
We urge Stakeholders to participate when the voters’ roll is laid open for inspection & this is the form of AUDIT provided by our electoral law.
If Parliament resolves that those who supply false information on the registration to vote must be prosecuted there should be changes to the Electoral law, to include guidelines to the commission on how to identify addresses in both rural and urban areas.
Some of these proofs of residence have been commissioned by politicians like councillors from across all political parties.