HARARE – The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) says it registered over 100,000 new voters during its second phase of its mobile voter registration outreach which ran from April 11 to 30.
ZEC did not provide precise data, but spokesman Jasper Mangwana said total registrations were “about 110,000.” The full breakdown by province will be released on Thursday, he said.
The elections body also processed 50,000 applications for change of polling station, it said in a statement.
ZEC registered 81,742 new voters in the first phase of the mobile voter registration exercise which ran between February 1 and 28.
Mangwana attributed the higher number of registrations during the shorter second phase to the Civil Registry Department’s own mobile exercise to issue identity documents which is currently underway across the country.
“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,” Mangwana said.
ZEC said it was embarking on a “de-duplication exercise” to remove people who have double registered from the voters roll. Bizarrely, Mangwana attributed the phenomenon of people registering twice to civil society organisations which carried out campaigns to get people to register to vote.
Zimbabwe’s opposition parties are pinning their hopes of victory in next year’s general elections on getting young people to register as voters.
Voter registration is a continuous exercise at ZEC’s 63 district and 10 provincial offices across the country.
