ELECTORAL Commission of Zambia (ECZ) chief electoral officer Patrick Nshindano has disclosed that the certified 2021 register of voters stands at 7,023,499.

And Nshindano has announced that a total of 19 presidential candidates paid the K95,000 nomination fee.

Speaking during a media briefing, Monday, Nshindano noted that only 43.2 percent voters managed to verify their details.

He hoped that those that did not verify their details would not have issues and anomalies on the poll day.

“Only 43.2 percent (3,035,417) of registered voters were able to verify their details. Of these, 57 percent (1,727, 679) verified physically whilst 43 percent (1, 305,738) verified digitally using USSD and URL. This is the website platform that the commission did put in place. Western province had the highest number of verified registered voters at 64.7 percent of the provincial registered voters whilst Lusaka province had the lowest number of verified voters at 24.5 percent of provincial registered voters. You will note that from amongst the provinces, Lusaka province was the lowest this is in comparison to the number of registered voters in Lusaka,” Nshindano said.

“These processes are critical in ensuring the establishment of the clean and credible register for this year’s general election. It is the commission’s desire and wish that all those that did not verify their details will not be disenfranchised in any way due to anomalies that may arise as a result of not verifying one’s details. Let me reiterate that we have been emphasising on the need to verify one’s detail and like you have noted already, those that verified only accounted for 43.2 percent. We must mention that this is higher than the 2016 register in terms of verification numbers. It is our hope as a commission that those that did not verify will not have issues and anomalies on the poll day.”

And Nshindano said from the total registered voters of 7,023,499, 53 percent represented females while 46 percent represented males.

“In terms of numbers, to just recap, the commission announced the following in terms of registered voters. The first provisional register that was consolidated and communicated to the general public stood at 7,020,479. Following the first deduplication exercise, the provisional register stood at 7,002,393 and the difference was accounted for by duplicate records which were 18,086. Currently as it stands, the final total after consolidation, deduplication, transfers, appeals, and objections we are at 7,023,499. This shows the difference between the provisional and the final register of about 21,106 which accounts for 0.3 percent of the final register. We have provided the schedule of the breakdown in turn by province where these provincial differences have risen,” said Nshindano.

“In terms of the gender dimension, out of the total (7,023,499), 3,751 040 are female representing 53.4 percent so this has not changed from the last briefing while 3,272, 459 are male representing 46.6 percent. So in terms of percentage this has not changed though you will note slight varieties in terms of the numbers. We had some who came to change their gender. In terms of age distribution of the register, the age group between 24 years to 34 years accounted for the highest proportion of the registered voters accounting for 29.6 percent. So this is a category between 24 years to 34 years followed by the age group between 34 years to 50 years at 28.9 percent. The age group between 50 years and above was the lowest proportion of registered voters at 17.1 percent.”