5,5m register to vote — ZEC
THE number of registered voters now stands above 5,5 million people after more than 200 000 new registrants were recorded during the voters’ roll inspection, Zimbabwe Electoral Commission chair, Justice Priscilla Chigumba said yesterday.
She said the electoral body was collating information from provinces after voter registration closed last Friday to come up with a final voters’ roll.
“During the inspection period, we had 206 225 new registrants, with Midlands leading the pack with 39 079 people, followed by Harare which had 30 651,” Justice Chigumba said.
“Our number for registered voters is now slightly above 5,5 million from where we were. The total number of people who inspected the voters’ manually stands at 1 917 691. Those who inspected via bulk SMSs were above three million while those who used the USSD code *265# were in the region of 900 000. The platform which was not much active was the link to our website, which had about 50 000 people.”
Justice Chigumba said 46 377 people had transferred their polling stations.
“The number of people who registered afresh is about 8 684,” she said.
“Remember we had said our exclusion list had about 11 500 people and those who corrected their errors had to register afresh.
“Those turned away for various reasons were about 45 000. Some were turned away because they had no IDs, some had defaced IDs, some brought drivers’ licences, some had photocopies of IDs, some were under age while some were not citizens or residents of Zimbabwe.”
Inspection of the provisional voters’ roll ran from May 19 to 29 at 10 807 centres set up by ZEC for the exercise.
Justice Chigumba said they were now focused on the nomination courts which would sit on June 14.
“We are now going to the nomination courts and we are working on setting up those nomination courts,” she said.