The document’s foreword penned by prominent human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa partly reads:
“Currently negotiators from all three of Zimbabwe’s main political parties are engaged in trying to devise a roadmap to free and fair elections under a new and democratic constitution. This is, for all Zimbabweans, the Holy Grail … we have always known that we would not achieve the democratic future we want until there could be truly free and fair elections in Zimbabwe. The first and foremost essential ingredient for that is a properly drawn up voters’ roll — and this should be a document in the public domain, easily accessible not only to political parties but to members of the general public.”
The BusinessDay article received wide publicity both locally and internationally and many people now believe that a flawed voters’ roll is at the heart of Zimbabwe’s failure to hold “truly free and fair elections”.
But that is far from the truth.
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Johnson’s research has unearthed serious irregularities in the voters’ roll, such as the presence of thousands of new voters over 100 years old, thousands of 100-year-olds registered with the same date of birth, thousands of nonagenarian voters and even more thousands of underage voters on the roll as at October last year.
But according to election analysts, whereas a clean voters’ roll is one of the prerequisites of a free and fair election, on its own it doesn’t guarantee such a poll. A clean voters’ roll only assists in the conduct of elections; it has no relevance on the way those who actually do vote exercise their right to vote. It only prevents multiple voting by voters on their own account and also prevents cheats voting for registered persons no longer entitled to vote due to death or emigration.
What is of paramount importance to the Zimbabwean electoral process is not that those who wish to cheat by voting several times or cast ballots for those who are dead or ineligible to vote are prevented from doing so — although this is important — but that those who do vote do so in absolute secrecy. The cleanest voters’ roll cannot guarantee this.
This whole hype surrounding the flawed voters’ roll, electoral violence, ballot stuffing, the postal vote and multiple voting has become a red herring, diverting observers’ attention from the real crux of the matter which is that the majority of our people, especially those in the communal lands, susceptible to intimidation, are not voting in secrecy.
There has been a lot of hearsay that the postal vote has been abused, especially by the uniformed forces who have been made to vote more than once, but that vote, if it has happened at all, is not significant enough to determine the outcome of a national election. The elections of March 2008 support this fact. Ballot stuffing has also been dismissed because there is ballot paper reconciliation after voting and the system being used can easily unearth any incidents of vote stuffing. Material used during voting has been disclosed and examined in courts and nothing of significance has come out. Electoral violence is a common feature in many elections all over the world and since 2000 opposition parties, particularly the MDC, have won many constituencies in spite of it and in 2008 upstaged Zanu PF.
In this column a fortnight ago I averred that the proposed amendment to the Electoral Act which stipulates that the next elections be held on poll-station-based voters’ rolls will deprive voters of their right to voting in secrecy. It is common knowledge that villagers will be manipulated and forced to vote in a particular way. The voters will be subjected to retribution if they vote otherwise. In the past village heads have herded their subjects into polling stations and monitored the way they voted. Those deemed untrustworthy, such as the more literate ones, were forced to declare illiteracy so that partisan polling officers did the voting for them. All along the villagers would have been exposed to intimidation to the extent that there was no security for them before, during and after voting. If they voted the way they wanted they could still be fished out and punished. The polling-station-based voters’ rolls, no matter how clean the rolls may be, will aggravate this scenario. RW Johnson’s research dismally misses this point.
The Electoral Act itself is gravely flawed, especially regarding the method of voting set out in section 57 which provides for the manner of voting. Section 57 (e) (iii) describes the last stage of the method of voting as follows:
“Then fold the paper so that the official mark is visible and the names of the candidates and cross made are not visible and having held up the ballot paper so that the presiding officer can recognise the official mark, drop the ballot in the ballot box placed in front of the presiding officer …?”
For the rural voter who has been continually told that a certain political party has a way of telling how he or she has voted, this requirement of holding up the ballot paper to the presiding officer becomes detrimental to secrecy. The voter is not assured beyond a shadow of doubt that the presiding officer or any other person in the polling station cannot see how he or she has voted.
The Electoral Act must instill confidence in the voter that there is absolutely no way available of telling how he or she has voted.
Section 57 has literally reduced a secret ballot system into a vote by show of hands. In the initial stages of the use of the ballot paper in political elections, it was noted that the fear of possible discovery of how one voted was intimidating and did not facilitate the secrecy and security essential to have the true and genuine wish of the voter.
Voting in secrecy is the true Holy Grail, a clean voters’ roll is helpful to this but is hardly “the first and foremost essential ingredient” for a truly free and fair election.
