ECZ Nets Additional 600,000 Voters During 4 Day Extension, Bringing Total To Just Over 7 Million

THE Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) says it has registered over seven million eligible voters for the 2021 general elections.

The Commission also said it had managed to register 93 per cent of eligible prisoners as voters to take part in the election.

Addressing the press yesterday, ECZ Chief Electoral Officer Patrick Nshindano announced that new statistics showed that less than nine million Zambians were currently eligible to vote.

“The Commission had captured a total of 6,407,752 registered voters during phases one, two, three and four of the exercise. The extended four days gave us a figure of 612,997 registered voters, bringing the total number of registered voters for the entire period of the voter registration exercise to a provisional total of 7,020,749,” Nshindano said. “Kindly take note that the figure is provisional as the data collected will be subjected to de-duplication and clean-up process.”

He added that the response from prisoners was overwhelming.

“Out of a targeted number of 16,000 eligible persons in lawful custody, the Commission registered a total number of 14,963, representing 93.52 per cent. The Commission is pleased with the response from persons in lawful custody to exercise their right to register as voters,” said Nshindano. “By the way, there is no country in the world where they have managed to capture all the eligible voters…We indeed registered over 83 per cent of the eligible voters above the global average in such a short period of time.”

He said the Commission would commence the process of consolidating data collected from all registration kits used during the registration process.

Meanwhile, ECZ Secretary and Legal Counsel, Bob Musenga has dispelled assertions that there is no legal instrument to actualise the participation of inmates as voters.

Mr Musenga has explained that the Constitutional Court, in the Godfrey Malembeka versus The Attorney General Case, expunged Section 9 of the Electoral Process Act, to pave way for inmates to participate in elections.

This article originally appeared on Lusaka Times