The key to the election today may be the number of ‘zombie’ voters that end up casting their vote:
Zimbabweans waited in long lines on March 31 to vote in their country’s sixth parliamentary election, knowing that two factors beyond their control could decide the nation’s fate – the so-called “zombie vote” and President Robert Mugabe’s personal power to appoint one in every five members of parliament without an electoral test.
Some 5.7 million adults in a total population of 11.5 million people – excluding 3.5 million political and economic refugees outside Zimbabwe’s borders – are registered to vote. But between one and two million of those voters, according to different estimates, are zombie voters, people known to be dead or who have been registered twice.
