Vote tampering report implies 900,000 ghost voters in Zim election

As voting day quickly approaches in Zimbabwe’s 2018 general election, an analysis of the country’s voters roll has surfaced in which is alleged that as many as 900,000 records may have been tampered with.

The report by Team Pachedu, a team of political analysts and data collectors, has found that the tampering instances include duplicate voters, voters with new identity numbers that have been created and assigned and voters who have had minor changes made to their identity numbers, according to News 24

The changes could be used to influence the outcome of Zimbabwe’s election.

Team Pachedu’s findings are a rather damning inditement against the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission’s (ZEC) insistence that the biometric identification system it’s using to authenticate voter records ensure that only one voter is assigned to to each record.

The report, which is based on an electronic copy of the voter’s roll, shows that some identity numbers are incorrect, some are being recycled, some are duplicates and that there are a lot of voters who have ‘registered’ using addresses in empty fields.

“We found strong evidence to suggest that over 100 000 potentially deceased voters were copied from the 2013 voters roll to the 2018 voters roll and that their ID numbers and in some cases their other details were purposely changed,” Team Pachedu told News 24.

“New evidence since publishing our reports suggests this figure may be closer to 900 000.”

Zimbabwe’s elections look set to come down to the wire after a poll revealed that the ruling Zanu PF party has an incredibly slender lead over its opposition, the Movement For Democratic Change (MDC).