The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Online News Editor
THE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has revealed that the delimitation exercise is set to be completed by December to ensure that the results are usable for the next Harmonised elections that are set to be held next year.
Zec is in the process of delimitating the 210 constituency National Assembly seats for the 2023 polls in a manner that reflects the population distribution premised on latest census data.
Due to different rates of population growth, migration and to land use changes, the boundaries of constituencies and wards need to be redrawn on a regular basis.
In an update statement on the exercise, ZEC chief elections officer, Mr Utoile Silaigwana said in preparation for mapping afresh electoral boundaries, the Commission is bringing together provincial and district maps with topographical features such as mountains, rivers, roads, communication lines, settlements and different types of land use.
He revealed that ZEC had already completed a number of stakeholder engagements to appraise stakeholders on the exercise.
“The Commission expects to conclude the exercise by December this year. In terms of Section 161(2) delimitation must be completed six months before the conduct of any general election for it to be applicable to that election. Failure to adhere to this provision means the results of the delimitation exercise will not apply for the next general election, as the Commission will be compelled by the law to revert to boundaries of the 2007/2008 delimitation
“The Commission would like to assure the electorate that no one will be prejudiced by the delimitation outcome. The delimitation results will be an outcome based on the Commission’s adherence to the country’s legal provisions and fair practice. At all stages of the process, voter education and stakeholder engagements will be conducted to bring all interested parties on board,” reads the statement.
He said ZEC’s provincial and district offices are currently conducting the geo-referencing exercise, which is expected to be complete within the next few days.
“After geo-referencing, physical features that guide delimitation are extracted from the maps using computer-based software through a process called digitising. Digitising is followed by combining the extracted information with voter registration statistics of polling stations and physical addresses of voters to assist in drawing the polling areas so that each one of them remains within a stipulated voter population threshold.
“After mapping polling areas, fieldwork is carried out to verify the polling area boundaries in what is referred to as ground truthing. Polling areas are then combined to form wards while several wards are combined to form constituencies. The average voter population of each constituency is obtained by dividing the delimitation voters’ roll population by 210 constituencies with an allowable upper and lower limit of 20 percent,” reads the statement.
