BVR exercise hit hiccups - throwing the door open to new vote rigging opportunities

BVR exercise hiccups in Bulawayo force ZEC to manually write the polling station name on registration slips, resulting in the exercise proceeding at a snail’s pace.

Voter registration in opposition strongholds has always been beset by one problem after another resulting in many failing to register and even those who did manage to register failed to vote because, come voting day, their details were not in the polling station register they expected. History is repeating itself here.

“When the address of the registrant has been captured, the BVR machine is supposed to capture and print the name of the nearest polling centre relevant to the registrant,” ZEC official told New Zimbabwe.

“Since voting is going to be polling station based, the name of the polling centre nearest to where the registrant stays is supposed to appear on the voter’s registration slip but the machines are failing to bring up some of the polling centre names.”

 The voter registration is already going to be a rushed job because it should have started three years ago but was delayed and is only starting now with less than a year to go to voting day. Even this late start is not really a start since the majority of the BVR kits are not yet in the country. And now these reported malfunctions, will all mean one thing – many people will not be able to register as voters.

It is all very well for ZEC officials to manual add the name of the polling station on the registration slip. Who is going to make sure the data downloaded on the main server is up dated to reflect the manual field changes?

Data captured in the field should be downloaded to the main server(s) unedited so that auditing it is easy and straightforward.

Last time the regime increased the number of polling stations from 2 000 to 9 000, a 350% increase, just a few days before voting day. The regime has only to increase or decrease the number of polling station by even 10% and hundreds of thousands will be denied the vote because they will turn up at a polling station not knowing the system has allocated a different polling station.

Just looking at how ZEC is handling the voter registration exercise so far it is clear already that everyone entitled to vote will be given a chance to do so. There is no way ZEC is going to register all 7 million people to in the four months allocated and produce a verified voters’ roll in time for the elections. No way!

The blatant vote rigging and wanton violence shown during Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections proved, even to all those doubting Thomas who made a virtue of burying their heads in the sand, that Zanu PF rigged elections. Tsvangirai polled 73% of the votes in the March election, according to Mugabe’s own inadvertent admission. ZEC were ordered to recount and after six weeks of cooking up the figures the 73% to whittled down to 47% - enough to force the run-off.

In the run-off, Mugabe “declared war on the people’, as Tsvangirai readily admitted when he announced his withdrawal from the race. Mugabe and his thugs harassed, beat, raped and even murdered over 500 innocent Zimbabwe; forcing people to vote for him. He overhauled his 27% defeat in March turning it into a landslide 84% victory.

No one, not even the SADC and AU election observer teams notorious for approving dodgy past elections in Zimbabwe and in other countries, endorsed the elections as free, fair and credible and Mugabe’s victory as legitimate.

The Global Political Agreement that gave rise to the Zanu PF and MDC GNU and guaranteed by SADC was about implementing the democratic reforms designed to stop the vote rigging and barbarism of the 2008 elections. SADC leaders were very disappointed that at the end of the GNU not even one reform had been implemented. The regional leaders advised Morgan Tsvangirai and his fellow MDC leaders not to contest the 2013 elections with no reforms in place. They wanted the elections postponed until reforms are implemented.

“In 2013 the Maputo Summit, in June 2013, before the elections, the Maputo Summit was all about having the elections postponed – the SADC summit,” explained Dr Ibbo Mandaza, in an interview with Violet Gonda.

“I went there. I was there at the Summit and Mugabe pretended to agree to a postponement of the elections. If you recall, the postponement was based on the need to reform at least electoral laws.

“After that Summit, Morgan Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti, Welshman Ncube, all of them were called to a separate meeting by the Heads of State of SADC in the absence of Mugabe, that same evening. And they were told; I was sitting there outside the room with Mac Maharaj; they were told ‘if you go into elections next month, you are going to lose; the elections are done’.”

Since not even one democratic reform was implemented since the rigged July 2013 elections, it is obvious Zanu PF is going to rig the 2018 elections just as readily as the rigged the 2013 elections.

I will nail my colours on the mast; I will state it here and now that ZEC will NOT release a verifiable voters’ roll a month before the 2018 voting day as is required by law. The regime failed to release a verifiable voters’ roll for the 2013 elections; it was the smoking gun to the many voting rigging irregularities employed that year. Zanu PF’s vote rigging of next year’s elections is well and truly underway already through this rushed and chaotic voter registration. The one thing the regime will not do; come rain, come thunder, come hurricane; is release a verifiable voters’ roll and let the world know how it rigged the elections!  

I am not a man given to betting but will bet 100 to 1 ZEC will never release a verifiable voters’ roll a month before the elections, as is required by law. I will double the odds on the wager that MDC politicians will still contest next year’s flawed elections with no reforms implemented and no verified voters’ roll, just as they did in July 2013!