Tanzania’s election commission has released the final list of voters, which shows a slight reduction from last month’s release which put the number at 23.7 million.
It shows that some 22.7 million Tanzanians have been confirmed as having the right to elect leaders come Sunday, October 25.
The commission’s director of elections, Mr Ramadhani Kailima, said Monday that 1,031,769 previously registered voters have been struck out of the list following verification and processing of voters’ data.
At a meeting with political party leaders and the police, National Election Commission (NEC) said 181,452 people have been deleted from the national register for double registration.
According to Mr Kailima, some people registered up to eight times.
He further said the electoral body has also deleted 854,944 names from the list because they were those of 74,502 of biometric voter register (BVR) kit operators as part of their practical training before the actual registration began.
These 74,502 BVR operators registered themselves more than once in the course of their practical training.
NEC has also removed names of 3,870 persons who were discovered to be non-citizens after verification and their cards have been returned to the commission.
“We invite political parties to our data processing offices anytime to collect soft copies of the BVR as they have been requesting,” he said.
On Monday, Mr Kailima announced that NEC has prepared 65,105 polling centres, out of which 63,523 are for Tanzania Mainland while 1,580 others are for Zanzibar, 12 days ahead of the polls.
Monday’s meeting was, however, dominated by sentiments of vote rigging fears and the authenticity of the new software NEC has deployed for receiving, tallying and announcing the presidential vote results.
The complaints come barely a day after the commission convened a meeting with information and technology (IT) experts of political parties to take them through the new technology in order to allay fears.
