P134 million down the drain.
Our country has just spent P134 million (US$13 million) on a national registration exercise for the upcoming October 2019 general elections. In my view, this is wasted money.Thinking "outside the box" you can't help wondering why voters have to register at all before they can vote. Registration of voters introduces issues of "voter trafficking", among many other ills, in an election, The voters' roll that is compiled during the registration exercise can instead be compiled by the voters' actual casting of the ballot at the voting booth, provided:
(a) The voter can only vote once during an election
(b) A record of where the voter cast his/her vote is kept for the next five years.
In our country everyone above the age of sixteen (16) years is required by law to carry a national identification document (NID) bearing the individual's full name. date of birth, thumb print and other identifying characteristics. The NID is commonly referred to as "Omang". Furthermore , in our country everyone above the age of eighteen (18) years is entitled to vote.
As soon as the voting day is determined, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) can extract a potential voters' database (PVD) from the Omang database, based solely on the age of such individuals on voting day, without any interaction with those voters.The PVD becomes the heart of the voting exercise. The entire PVD must be made accessible to all voting stations (polling stations) live and online on voting day, otherwise neither proviso (a) nor (b) above can be satisfied. The only "cost" incurred in extracting the PVD is the addition of a field in each individual's record, where the name/identity of the polling station is going to be entered on polling day. It shall be accepted without dispute that wherever a voter casts their vote, is and will remain the voter's principal domicile for the next five years. This will ensure that if a bye-election has to be conducted during those five years, only those people who are identified by the PVD as having voted at that station in the last general election will be allowed to participate in the bye-election there.
All the ballot papers cast at a voting/polling station shall be stamped with the identity of the station and constituency, together with the Omang ID number of the voter, if need be. This exercise will be carried out right there and then, when the voter presents him or herself at the voting counter/desk. This will identify the ward and constituency of the voter. The law, in the form of the IEC or anyone else has no business disputing the voter's identification of their ward and constituency, because the law permits everyone to live wherever they wish, whenever they wish to do so. So as soon as the PVD is updated online, by entry of the polling station into the voter's record, during voting, it should be accepted as a true "snapshot" or reflection of where the voter's principal address is; in other words the PVD is trans formed into the valid voters' roll (VVR). What's more the VVR so obtained is really the only valid record of the voter's domicile AT ELECTION TIME! The VVR automatically renders redundant any perceived "voter trafficking" because the voter votes wherever she or he likes and the voter can only be in one place AT VOTING TIME.
The "voters' roll) for which we have just paid P134 million is only being "assumed" to be a valid record of voters' domiciles AT ELECTION TIME. In truth, the voter's domicile on elections day, let alone during a bye-election, may have substantively changed! So the question of why we have to spend P134 million on an unnecessary exercise remains a mystery in my mind. Perhaps voters' registration is one of those dinosaurs inherited from the colonial dispensation where some people were barred from voting on account of their colour, creed or status in life. The election exercise as described above has one other advantage - voting ballots get printed in generic form. In other words ballots that were printed for a Zimbabwean election can be used in a Botswana election and vice versa, a real saving for cash-strapped African countries.
(a) The voter can only vote once during an election
(b) A record of where the voter cast his/her vote is kept for the next five years.
In our country everyone above the age of sixteen (16) years is required by law to carry a national identification document (NID) bearing the individual's full name. date of birth, thumb print and other identifying characteristics. The NID is commonly referred to as "Omang". Furthermore , in our country everyone above the age of eighteen (18) years is entitled to vote.
As soon as the voting day is determined, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) can extract a potential voters' database (PVD) from the Omang database, based solely on the age of such individuals on voting day, without any interaction with those voters.The PVD becomes the heart of the voting exercise. The entire PVD must be made accessible to all voting stations (polling stations) live and online on voting day, otherwise neither proviso (a) nor (b) above can be satisfied. The only "cost" incurred in extracting the PVD is the addition of a field in each individual's record, where the name/identity of the polling station is going to be entered on polling day. It shall be accepted without dispute that wherever a voter casts their vote, is and will remain the voter's principal domicile for the next five years. This will ensure that if a bye-election has to be conducted during those five years, only those people who are identified by the PVD as having voted at that station in the last general election will be allowed to participate in the bye-election there.
All the ballot papers cast at a voting/polling station shall be stamped with the identity of the station and constituency, together with the Omang ID number of the voter, if need be. This exercise will be carried out right there and then, when the voter presents him or herself at the voting counter/desk. This will identify the ward and constituency of the voter. The law, in the form of the IEC or anyone else has no business disputing the voter's identification of their ward and constituency, because the law permits everyone to live wherever they wish, whenever they wish to do so. So as soon as the PVD is updated online, by entry of the polling station into the voter's record, during voting, it should be accepted as a true "snapshot" or reflection of where the voter's principal address is; in other words the PVD is trans formed into the valid voters' roll (VVR). What's more the VVR so obtained is really the only valid record of the voter's domicile AT ELECTION TIME! The VVR automatically renders redundant any perceived "voter trafficking" because the voter votes wherever she or he likes and the voter can only be in one place AT VOTING TIME.
The "voters' roll) for which we have just paid P134 million is only being "assumed" to be a valid record of voters' domiciles AT ELECTION TIME. In truth, the voter's domicile on elections day, let alone during a bye-election, may have substantively changed! So the question of why we have to spend P134 million on an unnecessary exercise remains a mystery in my mind. Perhaps voters' registration is one of those dinosaurs inherited from the colonial dispensation where some people were barred from voting on account of their colour, creed or status in life. The election exercise as described above has one other advantage - voting ballots get printed in generic form. In other words ballots that were printed for a Zimbabwean election can be used in a Botswana election and vice versa, a real saving for cash-strapped African countries.
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