By – Political Actors Dialogue (POALD), has presented a long list of electoral reform recommendations, which it said must be implemented before the country holds a national election in 2023.

POLAD principals met in Harare this Friday and finalised a draft document on proposed electoral reforms compiled by their Governance and Legislative Agenda Thematic Committee. It proposed the following:

1. Zimbabwe must move to the proportional representation electoral system
2. All election-related laws to be in the Electoral Act.
3. State funding of political parties must be widened to promote a multi-party democracy
4. Regulation of political campaign meetings must be kept to a bare minimum during the period from the proclamation of elections up to polling day.
5. The Electoral Act must have a specific provision giving each political party fielding candidates in an election a free statutory 2 hour period on each public media platform to propagate its campaign message and a minimum of 5 articles.
6. The formula for a 30% female quota in local authorities recently introduced by the constitution must be provided for in the Electoral Act in time for 2023.
7. ZEC regulations must be promulgated at least 6 months before the elections.
8. Proclamation of Election date must be at least 90 days before polling day.
9. Voters roll to be closed 14 days after the date of proclamation.
10. The voters’ roll must be published and made available at least 7 days before the nomination court.
11. Nomination of candidates must take place over a period of 5 days with the nomination court only sitting on the 5th day to announce the final list of successful candidates.
12. The number of nominators for Presidential candidates be increased from 100 to 200 with the nominators.
13. ZEC must be obliged by a specific provision of the Electoral Act to inform voters via both print and electronic public media of the names of candidates.
14. Ballot papers must have a single vertical column of names of candidates in alphabetic order of surnames, whatever the length.
15. There must be braille voting for blind voters.
16. Assisted voting on account of illiteracy to be restricted to voters above 70 years.
17. Election results must be announced with a maximum period of 72 hours.
18. Media is permitted to publish any election result already posted outside a polling station or ward centre or constituency centre.