Unraveling the Mystery of Zim’s Dead Voters

By Eric Sande

HARARE- Approximately 27 per cent of Zimbabwe’s 5.5m registered voters are dead, others appear to be babies or up to120 years old, implausibly surmounting the country's average life expectancy of 43. The findings were released Friday by the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), calling for the list to be overhauled so that the upcoming election cannot be rigged.

Tino Bere, ZESN chair said, “Nearly 52 per cent of men were registered, compared with 48 per cent of women which is unusual considering there are more women in the country than men,". Young people were underrepresented, with only 18 per cent registered. "There ought to be a lot more than that," Bere added.

"The computer test revealed that 2,344 people born between 1901 and 1909, therefore aged between 101 and 110 years, were on the voters' roll," it said. "Nine people born between 1890 and 1900, aged between 111 and 120 years, are registered voters."

The audit of the roll also cited more than 185,000 cases of the same voters being listed in two or more voting constituencies during Zimbabwe's last vote. A lawmaker also is in the report claiming to have found that more than 500 dead voters had all been given the same birth date — January 1, 1901.

The report was based on face-to-face interviews with voters and a computer analysis of lists in 102 of the nation's 1,900 voting wards, ending up with maximum margin of error of plus or minus 4 per cent at a 95 per cent confidence level, the network said.

From the research it was found that electoral officials had not made efforts to update the lists by deleting the dead and eliminating duplications.

Registrar General Tobaiwa Mudede, the government's chief voting administrator is seen as a Mugabe loyalist and his office is also the custodian of the nation's deaths register.