The Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) has assured the nation that appropriate action is being taken against those who intentionally registered more than once in an attempt to vote multiple times, as this constitutes electoral malpractice.
ECZ found more than 18,000 duplicate records that have since been isolated following the de-duplication and cleanup process. This list is now being interrogated and appropriate action will be taken.
The commission recorded a provisional total of 7, 020, 749 registered voters which now stands at 7, 002, 393 after isolating the duplicates therefore representing 0.2% marginal reduction from the initial 83.4% to 83.2% of eligible voters arising from duplicate records.
ECZ says it will look into the nature of the duplicates and take appropriate action against erring individuals, adding that some duplicates may be due to ignorance on the part of the person registering as a voter.
According to information made available to the Zambian Business Times-ZBT, ECZ Corporate Affairs Manager Patricia Luhanga said some duplicates might be errors during registration whilst others may be due to electoral malpractice in an attempt to vote more than once.
Luhanga said using the biometric voter registration made it possible for the accurate identification of a voter and ensure that nobody votes more than once. She said the system ensures that people who attempt to register more than once whether intentionally or unintentionally are detected and records are corrected accordingly.
She said this results in a clean register which is a major factor in rendering an election to be credible adding that the system that ECZ is using is able to detect identical twins because it is able to distinguish people by fingerprints.
Luhanga also mentioned that this is possible because no two individuals would have the same fingerprints. Like physical appearance and personality, fingerprints are largely shaped by a persons DNA and by a variety of environmental forces such that not even identical twins have the same fingerprints.
