Looks like we'll be having a Bio-metric voters roll in 2017

On Thursday, the UNDP flighted a tender in the Herald calling on bids for the Procurement of Biometric Voter Registration Kits. The tender by the UNDP is in collaboration with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission under the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission Capacity Building Project (ZIM-ECO).

The tender can be found on the UNDP website for any interested bidders.

This is the first real sign of ZEC’s move to accomplish a biometric voters roll by 2017 and possibly in time for the 2018 elections, speculation that the ZEC Chairperson Rita Makarau has publicly deflated by stating that the voters roll and the voting system are separate systems and if the ZEC decides to institute a biometric voting system for 2018 it would first inform the public.

The biometric voters roll will use photographs and the fingerprints to make sure a single vote is cast on the day of voting moving away from the archaic permanent pink ink that would come off days after casting your vote. Speaking to the Sunday Mail back in August 2016, Acting Chief Elections Officer Mr Silaigwana said:

The system has enabled the commission to have voters’ rolls that are specific to a particular polling station within a ward. The system ensures that a voter’s name appears in one polling station where the voter can cast their vote. The ward boundaries remain unchanged and voters are allocated to polling stations within the ward.

Eyebrows had been raised over the funding of the project which had been put at $50 million with ZEC stating that the Zimbabwe Government would fund the system with the support of the UNDP.

We have previously covered how the ZEC was urging all citizens to turn up for the voter registration in 2017 as the country adopts a new biometric voters roll and published a guest post on how Zimbabwe could manage the risks of having a Biometric election come 2018.

Looks like we’ll be having a Bio-metric voters roll in 2017