STATISTICIANS Team Pachedu, which has been auditing the voters roll ahead of the 2023 polls, has raised concern over fake identity cards (IDs) that have been included in the voters roll.
In a series of tweets, Team Pachedu said an analysis of the 2008, 2018 and 2022 voters rolls revealed the existence of thousands of fake ID numbers, which could compromise the credibility of elections.
It alleged that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) was bloating the voters roll ahead of next year’s polls.
“We have discovered how Zec has been bloating the voters roll with thousands of duplicate voters since 2008 by simply adding a zero to the IDs. The subsequent fake IDs with a fake issue number are also in the 2022 roll,” Team Pachedu tweeted.
“In February, we exposed these fakes, but we have now confirmed how Zec did it — thanks to fuzzy matching and the Registrar General’s office. For example, fake ID 00-3135709-D03 was created by adding a zero to a valid ID 03-135709-D03.”
Team Pachedu said in Zimbabwe, no valid ID starts with 00, as IDs are numbered according to the issuing district.
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“Registrar-General officials confirmed that the IDs were not real,” Team Pachedu said.
Zec yesterday dismissed Team Pachedu’s claims.
Its spokesperson Jasper Mangwana said: “There has been a voter inspection period that was conducted this year for a period of 10 days and no such issues were raised by stakeholders.
“There is no relationship between the 2008 voters roll, the voters roll used in the 2018 elections, and the new (2022) voters roll, which has been created through biometric voter registration in preparation for the 2018 elections which is the one that the commission is currently using,” Mangwana said.
He added: “The commission cannot comment on unauthenticated sources of information pertaining to IDs, unless otherwise it could have been an issue raised by the Registrar General, who is the custodian to this issue to say that this information is misleading.”
Registrar-General Henry Machiri said he was unaware of the fake ID issue.
“I am unaware of this issue of fake ID as it has not reached my office desk,” Machiri said.