Let’s continue to refine our election management system

They claim they have found names of dead people on the roll.
The registrar of voters, Mr Tobaiwa Mudede, has repeatedly explained that the voters roll can never be perfect as long as people are dying and not informing his office.
He has argued that he can only update it if he gets to know who is no longer alive.
This has been difficult to accept for those that believe that this is a deliberate ploy to rig elections in favour of Zanu-PF. They insist that the roll should be perfect before elections are held.
Mr Mudede must feel vindicated by revelations that the self-anointed master of democracy, the United States, has a voters roll with two million dead people on it and that among 24 million voter registrations, one out of every eight are either no longer valid or inaccurate.
The analysis of the US’ voters roll shows that it is far from perfect. Yet the United States is preparing to hold presidential and congressional elections in November.
This means they accept that voters rolls can never be 100 percent perfect. But they must be in a state that does not compromise the credibility of the election. So they are pushing ahead to hold their elections as scheduled.
We have no problem with that.
What we find obnoxious is that they go on to demand perfect voters rolls in countries in which they are involved in regime change projects like Zimbabwe.
They then seek to impose their will in those countries and decide who has won and who has lost.
Whilst Zimbabwe’s voters roll needs constant attention it never has been the reason why party A has won or party B has lost. But as we move towards a possible election this year, we need to improve the condition of our voters roll.
Money must be put into updating the roll. Mr Mudede has said he needs US$20 million to sustain on-going work on the roll. This would enable his office to deploy teams to visit chiefs, headmen, village heads and other community leaders to collect information on those who would have died in their areas.
This must be a continuous and sustained exercise, and it costs money.
To demand a cleaner voters roll without spending money on it is an exercise in futility and dishonesty.
We do not dispute that questionable voters rolls undermine voter confidence and fuel partisan disputes over the integrity of elections as pointed out by David Becker, director of Election Initiatives at the Pew Centre, which has just unearthed the embarrassing state of the US voters roll.
The challenges of a perfect roll are common in all countries. If election officials are not updating their voter registration systems after registrants have moved to other voting districts or have died the roll will get worse by the day.
And the reason they are not updated consistently often has to do with the costs involved and not a desire to rig elections as alleged by some Zimbabwean political parties.
Zimbabwe can also learn from those countries that have found cheaper methods of updating their voters rolls. Quite often it is those countries that are technologically advanced that have better success in knocking down the costs.
We have to invest in the necessary technology, which means there must be a mindset shift among those responsible for financing the election and those that manage it.
Use of technology is bound to improve the accuracy of voter registration lists while also reducing the costs of maintaining those lists.
So our election management body, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and the Registrar General must invest in more modern technology and systems of data collection and storage.
Pew Centre has recommended that registration lists be compared with other data sources, such as the national change of address records – that is if they exist. It has also recommended that proven techniques and security protocols that use additional data sources to eliminate inaccurate records be used.
They also recommend that countries minimise manual data entry and establish ways for voters to submit information online.
All this is technology-based.
Given where we are as a country, these are long term methods, which we must begin to explore.
But it all starts with the acceptance of e-government in the same way that the private sector has accepted and is making steady progress in the area of e-business.
Eventually voters will have to take control of voter registration data and update it themselves online. Of course signing up online may not be as secure as using pen and paper and there is bound to be resistance.
Should we decide to go ahead with our decision to hold elections this year, we believe that there is no strong enough reason to question our ability to do so.
Like any other country we must continue to refine our election management system, striving for excellence.