ELECTION WATCH 21/2023

[18th August 2023]

Postal Voting and Printing of Ballot Papers

There have been allegations in the press that police officers were compelled to cast their postal votes under the eyes of their superiors, to ensure they voted for the ruling party.  These are serious allegations and must be investigated, but whatever their truth they raise questions about the adequacy of our law on postal voting and also about the printing of ballot papers, as we shall explain in this bulletin.

Postal Voting

Postal voting is a system that enables voters to cast their votes even though they cannot get to their polling station on polling day.  It is not open to all voters, however:  under section 72 of the Electoral Act only the following people can vote by post:

• members of the security services – i.e. the Defence Forces, the Police Service and the Prisons and Correctional Service – who are on duty over the polling period,
• electoral officers on polling duty, and
• public servants who are posted outside Zimbabwe, as well as their spouses if they are also outside Zimbabwe.

Applications for postal votes are made to the Chief Elections Officer at the head office of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission [ZEC] under section 73 of the Act.  If the Chief Elections Officer is satisfied that an applicant is entitled to a postal vote, he [the Chief Elections Officer is currently a man] sends the applicant one or more postal ballot papers – one paper for each election (presidential, parliamentary and local authority) that is to take place.  The applicant then casts his or her vote by marking a cross “secretly” on each of the ballot papers, seals them in an envelope and sends the envelope back to the Chief Elections Officer by registered post or courier in terms of section 75 of the Act.  On receipt of the envelope the Chief Elections Officer distributes it to the appropriate polling station where it is kept unopened until polling day, when it is opened and the postal votes counted.

Some points to note:

• The Chief Elections Officer must keep a list of all the postal ballot papers he issues, showing the names, addresses and ID numbers of the voters, plus their constituencies and polling stations.  Members of the public are entitled to inspect this list, free of charge, at ZEC’s head office until the results of the election are announced [section 74(4) of the Act].
• The Chief Elections Officer must keep a list of all the postal ballot envelopes he receives back from voters, showing when they were received, the names and ID numbers of the voters and the constituencies to which the envelopes were sent.  Again, this list can be inspected, free of charge, by members of the public – not just party agents and election observers but anyone who goes to ZEC’s offices and asks to see it.
• The procedure for members of the security services to cast their postal votes is not laid down in the Act or in regulations made under the Act.  Section 75 does however say that postal voters must cast their vote “secretly”, which means that senior officers are not allowed to see how their subordinates vote.  A senior officer who does try to see how a subordinate has voted, or who tries to influence a subordinate’s vote, is guilty of an offence under section 86, 133B or 134 of the Act and is liable to punishment accordingly.

Deficiencies in the law on postal voting

Postal voting is notoriously open to abuse because many of the safeguards applicable to voting in polling stations cannot be applied to voters who vote by post.  At polling stations voters have to appear in person;  their identities are checked by polling officers, they are given their ballot papers and they go into the polling booths, all under the gaze of election observers and party agents;  under the same public gaze they put their completed ballot papers into the ballot-boxes.  Everything is as transparent as possible.  Postal voting, by contrast, is done in private out of sight of election observers, so there is no way of telling if postal ballots received by the Chief Elections Officer were filled in freely by the voters concerned, or even if they were filled in by the voters themselves.

The system might be improved if:

• Procedures for postal voting by members of the security services were laid down in the Act or regulations, to ensure that senior officers have no opportunity to influence the way their subordinates cast their votes.
• Election observers and party polling agents were allowed to witness postal voting by security service members.  This would entail someone – ZEC or the security services concerned – giving public notice of when and where postal voting is to take place.

There is a further reform that should be made, which we have mentioned in previous Election Watches:  postal voting should be extended to additional classes of voters who are unable to cast their votes at polling stations.  We have in mind hospital staff and other workers in essential services, as well as hospital patients and even prisoners – who are entitled to vote under the present Constitution.  This reform would entail an amendment to section 72 of the Electoral Act, something that the present Government has been reluctant to do.

Printing of Ballot Papers

ZEC has not yet informed political parties about where and by whom and how many ballot papers are being or have been printed, and as a result the CCC Party felt compelled to apply to the High Court for an order compelling ZEC to supply the information.  According to the party’s lawyer, ZEC has undertaken to supply it by the end of day tomorrow, Saturday the 19th August.

This is disturbing.  Section 52(2) of the Electoral Act says that ZEC must “without delay” provide the following information to all political parties and election observers:

• where and by whom the ballot papers are being or have been printed
• the total number of ballot papers printed for the election
• the number of ballot papers distributed to each polling station.

Note those words “without delay”.  Police officers have already been voting by post, so the ballot papers must have been printed quite some time ago – long enough ago for ZEC to complete the time-consuming process of collating and sending out papers to the people who applied for postal votes.

Why has ZEC not given parties the information they asked for about printing the ballot papers?  Has ZEC something to hide, or is this just another example of ZEC’s secretiveness?

It is to be hoped that when ZEC supplies the information tomorrow, it will give a satisfactory explanation for its delay.