Election Monitoring Group Calls On ECZ To Fix Broken Voters Roll

The SADC Good Governance and Elections Monitoring group (SGGEM) - a pro-democracy NGO with offices in Johannesburg and Lusaka - has called on the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) to fix the 2021 voters roll, either by reopening voter registration in underrepresented regions or by merging the roll with the previous register used for elections in 2016. 

SGGEM say that in its current format, the new voters roll has “a lot of serious problems” and that it leaves Zambia open to the possibility of “a sham of elections and a complete diversion from the principles of democracy and good governance”. 

This could, they warn, put the country at a high risk of civil unrest.

Writing in an open letter to the ECZ, SGGEM highlight that in some regions of the country, as little as 14.43% of the population have been registered to vote. 

According to SGGEM’s investigations, “huge numbers” of citizens who participated in the 2016 elections will not be able to vote this August because their names are missing from the register. 

SGGEM say this is in-keeping with their concerns at the time of the voter registration exercise, when they warned that the ECZ would be unable to register the targeted 9 million voters in the mere 30 allotted days. 

To date only 7 million Zambians have been registered to vote. 

The number of registered voters as a percentage of the population in several districts.

In order to fix this issue, SGGEM call on the ECZ to re-open the voter registration exercise, particularly in areas where many people were originally left out, in order to capture more eligible voters. 

Failing this, they recommend that the new voters roll be merged with that of the 2016 election, in order to ensure that those who were eligible to vote in the last election will be able to keep that right.

The names of those who have died since 2016 will of course be removed from the register and those who have been issued with a 2021 voter card must use that card in order to cast their ballot, SGGEM say. 

The concerns echo those from numerous civil society groups that the new voter roll has disenfranchised a massive number of eligible Zambians.

That this disenfranchisement is so regionally varied, also speaks to concerns by UNZA lecturer Sishuwa Sishuwa that the new voter roll is heavily biased in favour of the Patriotic Front. 

Dr Sishuwa has warned that the massive drop in the number of registered voters in historic opposition seats gives the government a massive advantage and risks turning Zambia’s election into a “scam”.