New voter registrants require finger print verification says Chigumba
A new voter registrant will require their finger print to be verified before they can be entered into the voters roll even after they have received a voter registration slip, Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has said.
“Registering to vote does not mean as soon as you are handed a voter registration slip to show you have registered to vote that does not mean automatically your name has been added onto the voters’ roll,” ZEC chairperson Priscilla Chigumba told journalists in Victoria Falls on Thursday.
“There is another process which happens after you register to vote which is a process whereby the documents that you have submitted to be registered to vote are verified by our system,” she continued.
“We have two systems of verification. Firstly, we verify your national identity if it is genuine. The next thing is we verify your fingerprints which we run through a system called automated fingerprint verification system.”
Election Resource Centre’s Barbara Bhebhe said ZEC was within its mandate to ensure verification of new registrants.
“The Electoral Act in Section 32 and 35 allows ZEC to undertake verification upon registration. However, the verification process must be done before an election and cannot be used as a basis to disqualify someone from voting,” Bhebhe said.
Meanwhile, Chigumba said Zec would hold a voter registration blitz in April.
“The reason we have a voter blitz in two phases, one in February and one in April is that after April we then clear the voters’ roll for purposes of delimitation because we anticipate that the delimitation process will be started after August of 2022 which is when the final census report will be tabled before Parliament.
“We do voter registration and start cleaning the data in order to determine who should be on the voters’ roll and who does not have authentic documents,” she said.
“April voter registration blitz is the final blitz which we will use to have registered voters who will inform the delimitation process.”
