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Herald Reporter
MORE than 100 000 people registered to vote for the first time in the just ended Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) 20-day registration blitz which is part of preparations for next year’s harmonised elections.

Zec, the constitutional body mandated with running elections, also revealed that it processed over 50 000 applications for voter transfers during the blitz that was held between April 11 and April 30.

This was the second voter registration exercise that also coincided with the issuance of identity documents to enable people to register to vote.

According to data from Zec, the highest registrants were in Harare and Bulawayo Metropolitan Provinces, while a breakdown of all provinces is expected tomorrow.

Zec spokesperson Mr Jasper Mangwana yesterday told The Herald that the huge turnout was also a result of the Registrar General’s office’s role in processing national documents.

“The huge numbers we have received during this phase can be attributed to the confidence and credibility that Zimbabweans are showing in the Commission. In this second voter registration phase that was conducted in just 20 days, we received about 110 000 new voter registrants.

“During the first phase conducted for 28 days, we only had about 49 000 applications and this time the numbers have doubled. We give credit to the office of the Registrar General for handling the issue of national identity documents with professionalism to enable people to register to vote,” Mr Mangwana said.

He said Zec will continue engaging stakeholders until the country holds the next harmonised elections while the final data will be availed to the people after a de-duplication process of the information is conducted.

According to Zec, some Civic Society Organisations (CSOs) that were mobilising people to register to vote, did a disservice to the process as they caused double registration.

“We are going to embark on a data cleaning exercise in which we will remove all duplicated applications. This de-duplication exercise will provide final data to the people.

“Remember we had CSOs that were involved in this drive but in some cases ended up having double voter registrants. We need to clean that,” said Mr Mangwana.

For the mobile voter registration phase, Zec established 210 voter registration teams to cater to the 210 constituencies, in addition to the 63 district offices and 10 provincial centres.

The teams were mobile and covered a total of 2 723 centres during the first phase with the process being replicated in the second phase to ensure that every Zimbabwean who is eligible to vote is registered.

Voter education teams were also deployed around the country, while the commission held several campaigns on various media platforms, urging the country to register to vote.

Apart from registering new voters for next year’s elections, the process is also meant to help in the delimitation process that informs constituency boundaries.