The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) says it will discontinue issuing copies of the voters’ roll to stakeholders on CDs.

ZEC said that the move is to help protect people’s personal data from being shared via social media platforms.

In the past, ZEC had been issuing the voters roll to election stakeholders so that they can analyse it.

ZEC spokesperson Commissioner Jasper Mangwana said that instead of the voters’ roll on CDs, ZEC will be creating an interactive online portal that it will be monitoring. Said Mangwana:

In the future, we are not going to issue the voters’ roll on CDs to candidates and stakeholders.

We are going to create an online portal that is searchable because the voters roll is supposed to be searchable, and this portal can be monitored by ZEC you will be issued with login details to access it and the portal will send an OTP to a local number only.

However, Team Pachedu said the move would be illegal and will make it impossible to audit the voters’ roll. Tweeted Team Pachedu:

Jasper Mangwana says that ZEC will soon stop issuing voters’ rolls on CDs.

ZEC wants to create a monitored online portal where records can only be searched one at a time and will only be accessible in Zimbabwe.

This is illegal and will make auditing impossible!

ZEC and Team Pachedu are involved in a dispute on the issue of the ZEC server which Team Pachedu claims is being hosted by Africom, a company owned by the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF).

Mangwana denies that the ZEC server is hosted by Africom, saying it is not in a location that was alleged by Team Pachedu.