ESR Calls On Zec To Ensure Transparency Of Presidential Election, Calls For Publication Of Polling Station Results

The Election Situation Room (ERS) has called on the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) to publish the presidential results of every polling station to ensure transparency. The ERS advised against Zec release the aggregated results without showing the individual polling station results. In a statement, the ERS said,

In order to meet its legal obligation to present the Zimbabwean electorate with a transparent Presidential return and not simply a tabulated total figure, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission should publicly release the spreadsheet containing the Presidential election results from each polling station underpinning the aggregated total Presidential results from the July 30th election. ZEC has a dedicated official website and there are no IT-related challenges to uploading such a spreadsheet to its website at the very same time as it announces the tabulated aggregated result to its citizens. This level of transparency is in compliance with Zimbabwean law and fully in line with Zimbabwe’s regional and continental commitments to democratic elections.

Political parties and Observer organizations need to be able to check and verify that the tallied results match the results collected by their agents and observers at the polling centres in order to provide confidence in the results. There is a serious risk of non-acceptance of the results if stakeholders are unable to verify tallying.

…ZEC’s Poll Worker Manual is currently silent on how the Commission intends to process Presidential election results at its National Command Centre in Harare. In fact, ZEC has to date not published any information regarding its results tabulation procedures at the National Command Centre

According to the Electoral Act (Art 37) the “final result of the presidential election shall, after reconciling the provincial returns with the polling station returns and presidential constituency returns referred to in the provisos to paragraphs (b) and (d) respectively, be reflected in a return that distinctly reflects number of votes cast for each presidential candidate at every polling station, ward centre, presidential constituency centre and provincial command centre.”

Download the Pindula App for a better user experience.