Simbabwe: Wahlbetrug vor der Wahl

When thinking of stolen elections in Zimbabwe, most casual observers will think of the tremendous violence meted out by Mugabe and his junta to their opponents and the terror employed to swing the results in favour of the octogenarian and his cleptocratic clique. But among the most insidious manipulations is ZANU's (Zimbabwe African National Union) distortion of the voters' roll, which tilts the playing field (or rather the ballot boxes) in favour of ZANU and making a mockery of any future election held before the roll has been cleaned up. RW Johnson's meticulous analysis of these manipulations and distortions is a study in 'how to rig the election process' a long time before any observers ever arrive.

“Comparing the voters' roll as of October 2010 with the roll used in the 2008 harmonised elections, we find that in 2010 there are 366,550 new voters who have not appeared on any previous roll.

This is extremely surprising considering that the overall population of Zimbabwe has been falling due both to a very high mortality rate and large-scale emigration. It might have been expected, nonetheless, that there would be some new voters in the youngest age group of roughly 18 to 25.

There is also a very unlikely total of 49,239 new voters over the age of 50 - and this when average life expectancy in Zimbabwe has fallen to 44.8 years. Even more surprising is the fact that 16,033 of these new voters are over the age of 70 years, while 1,488 of them are over the age of 100...

Overall, the full voters' roll shows no less than 41,119 centenarians. This is an impossible figure. The United Kingdom (UK), with a total population of over 60 million and an average life expectancy more than 30 years longer than Zimbabwe's, has only 10,000 centenarians.”

The foundation’s think-tank partner South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) first published the report of the journalist and historian RW Johnson “Preventing Electoral Fraud in Zimbabwe: A Report on the Voters' Roll in Zimbabwe” on their website.

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