ECZ wants to remove the requirement for stamping ballot papers because, in some polling stations, officers “forget” to stamp and the ballots end up rejected. On the surface, that sounds like a practical fix to a practical problem. But when you scratch just a little deeper, it starts to look like the Commission is trying to cure a backache by removing the patient’s spine. From where we stand, the argument that officers were forgetting to stamp ballot papers is not a serious justification for reducing a key layer of electoral control. If anything, it is an admission of a training and accountability problem. Before ECZ makes this proposal, it must interrogate this question: why was the stamp introduced in the...
