By Paul Nyathi|Inspection of the newly produced Zimbabwe Electoral Commission voters roll opens on Saturday for a period of eleven days.
The inspection opens with reports that 11 000 possible voters were rejected by the electronic Biometric Voter Registration system who have been put in a seperate exclusion roll.
The exclusion list, consists of registrants who could not be on the provisional voters roll for various reasons including multiple registrations, sharing of the same ID number and the deceased.
The exclusion lists, will be provided alongside the provisional voters roll at polling stations where the anomalies were identified.
The inspection will take place in 10 807 centres established by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) countrywide.
The process allows prospective voters to check if their details are correctly captured and to correct anomalies.
Those on the provisional voters’ roll are people who registered before the cut-off date of April 6, 2018.
People who registered after April 6 will appear on the final voters’ roll.
Addressing journalists in Harare yesterday, ZEC chairperson Justice Priscilla Chigumba said the inspection shall be open from May 19 to May 29 from 7am to 5pm during the entire inspection period.
“This is a critical stage in the production of a completely new voters’ roll for the forthcoming harmonised elections and beyond.
“The inspection follows a series of events that started with the launch of the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) blitz and mop up exercise, which saw the commission registering about 5,4 million registrants.
“These entries went through a data cleaning process where some anomalies were identified. The most commonly observed discrepancies arose from typographical errors and incorrect polling station posting while others involved people with the same ID numbers and multiple registrations,” he said.
She said they are expecting to identify more anomalies by subjecting it to public inspection before a final voter’s roll is gazetted.
“The inspection of the provisional voters roll is in itself an auditing process by citizens,” she said.