Claim: This is your last chance to get onto the voters’ roll for the 2023 election.
Source: Twitter
Verdict: False
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission in early March announced a 10-day mobile biometric registration blitz running from the 12th to the 21st of March 2023.
In a statement announcing the exercise, ZEC referred to it as a ‘mobile Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) exercise from 12 March to 21 March 2023 in preparation for the Harmonised Elections’.
Encouraging people to go and register, Citizens Coalition for Change spokesperson, Fadzayi Mahere, said in a tweet, this is the last chance for those who want to vote in 2023 to get on the voters roll.
Mahere was not the only one to say this is the last opportunity for people to register to vote, with some media houses calling it ‘the final voter registration blitz’.
Registration Deadline for 2023 Election
The Electoral Act states in Section 26A (Closure of voters roll before nomination day) that no person shall be registered as a voter for the purposes of voting at any Presidential election or election of members of the Parliament or councillors unless he or she lodges a claim for registration or transfer of registration under section 24 or 25 no later than the second day following the publication of proclamation.
This means that to vote in this year’s general election, citizens can continue to register until the second day after the publication of the proclamation announcing the election dates.
ZEC does not only register people to vote during mobile registration exercises like this one, but is mandated to carry out continuous registration at its offices as outlined in Section 17A of the same act.
When will the election date be proclaimed?
Over the weekend, President Emmerson Mnangagwa addressing people attending a field day at his Kwekwe farm said the ‘election dates will be announced soon’.
The prerogative of deciding the exact date to proclaim the election lies with the President. However, the decision is not necessarily arbitrary, as it is mandated by the Constitution and the Electoral Act.
The Constitution, as stated in a previous fact check, mandates that an election take place not more than 30 days before the expiry of the current presidential term.
For 2023, this means the election will have to be between 27 July and 26 August 2023.
There are a number of processes that have to take place before polling day. The timelines for these are set out in the Electoral Act.
There has to be a maximum of 84 days and a minimum of 44 days from publication of the proclamation to polling day.
The stages are divided as 14 to 21 days from the date of publication of proclamation to the day the nomination court sits. Then another 40 to 63 days from the day the nomination court sits to polling day.
With elections set for between 27 July and 26 August, the earliest date that the President can make a proclamation for a 27 July election is 5 May and the latest 14 June 2023.
For a 26 August election, the earliest is 2 June and the latest 13 July 2023.
For any polling date between 27 July and 26 August, one can calculate a minimum of 44 days and a maximum 84 days between proclamation and polling.
Closing of Voters Roll
While voters registration is done continuously, per s17A of the Electoral Act; the voters roll for the August 2023 elections will be closed for registration two days after publication of the proclamation of the election, per s26A of the Act.
The earliest this will be is 7 May and the latest 14 July 2023.
Conclusion
The claim that the current mobile registration exercise is the ‘last chance to get onto the voters’ roll for the 2023 election’ has been rated as false. This is because according to Zimbabwean statutes, voter registration is continuous at ZEC offices; and the voters roll for a particular election is only closed after the publication of the proclamation. In the case of the 2023 elections, citizens who fail to register during the mobile blitz can still register and be eligible to vote in this year’s election until 7 May 2023, at least.
