By The Election Resource Centre

Harare, Zimbabwe (News of the South)- Zimbabwe is now in the late pre-election phase of the electoral cycle. The pre-election season is characterized by key processes including voter registration, recruitment of personnel, and provision of voter information.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) is currently implementing Biometric Voter Registration (BVR), cleaning the voters’ roll and voter education for inspection of the voters’ roll.

Following the BVR blitz in 2017 and the mop-up exercise which concluded on February 8, 2018, the voter registration process is now ongoing at provincial and district centres.

During the implementation of these processes, it is important for stakeholders including political parties and civil society organizations to closely monitor, to detect any potential for systematic manipulation of  electoral processes.

Election “rigging,” is a broad term that refers to fraud, malpractice and systematic manipulation.

It is important to inform election stakeholders and citizens of the different “rigging” mechanisms as this enables the identification and rapid or near real time redress.

A good understanding of the three, enables stakeholders to document and seek redress in the electoral court. Previous cases have been dismissed for want of evidence, of course ceteris paribus (political intimidation of courts, judicial will among others).

Kindly find attached a discussion paper that addresses systematic manipulation as the now dominant form of “rigging” in Zimbabwe.

It implores upon election stakeholders to watch early warning signs of systematic manipulation and seek necessary remedies to ensure democratic choice is enhanced.

The paper outlines the different types of “rigging”, providing pointers of systematic manipulation and recommendations to curb systematic manipulation.

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