Electoral body won’t open servers to public: ZEC

THE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) will not open its servers to the public, as its data storage facility is a security area, ZEC commissioner Dr Qhubani Moyo has said.

Dr Moyo said this in an interview following calls by some civil society organisations that ZEC should make its servers accessible to members of the public for accountability purposes.

Dr Moyo said the electoral body could not open up its servers to the public due to security reasons.

“Zimbabwe has millions of people and if we open up our servers you can imagine what will happen,” he said.

“But the key thing is that storage of data is purely a security matter between ZEC and the person who is registered.

“The moment you begin to open that data to anyone else other than the party that has registered, you will be, therefore, compromising the whole issue of secrecy of data.”

Dr Moyo said there was a difference between ZEC’s constitutional mandate in dealing with electoral matters and civil society’s expectations. He said the public would be invited to evaluate data during voter inspection, which will lead to the formulation of a voter’s roll.

“There is going to be voter inspection, so during voter inspection, the people can then evaluate the information that we would have put into the servers as this is what is going to be placed in the provisional voter’s roll,” Dr Moyo said.

The mobile BVR programme started on October 16 and is ending today, but ZEC intends to extend it.

The electoral commission has already approached Treasury requesting nearly $8 million to conduct a mop up exercise.