Global Initiative to Enfranchise People with Disabilities: Zimbabwe - www.electionaccess.org Text Only Version
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Zimbabwe

General Right to Vote
Constitution:
(1996)
• See article 58

Exclusion Based on Mental Disability
Electoral Law:
(source: IPU)
• Disqualification from voting: insanity or mental deficiency, incapacity to manage own affairs

Voter Assistance by Other Citizens
Electoral Law:
• Section 51, subsection (1) states: "At the request in person of a voter who cannot read or write or who is incapacitated by blindness or other physical cause from voting in the manner provided in section forty-nine, the presiding officer shall cause the vote of such voter to be there and then marked on a ballot paper in the manner directed by the voter and the ballot paper to be placed in the ballot box, and if the directions of the voter as to the manner in which his vote is to be marked on the ballot paper are not sufficiently clear to enable the vote to be so marked without further directions from the voter, the presiding officer may cause such questions to be put to the voter as, in his opinion, are necessary to elicit such further directions."

Off-Site Voting Alternatives
Electoral Law:
• Section 53, subsection (1) states: "When an election is to take place in a constituency a voter ordinarily resident in Zimbabwe who is resident in that constituency or was, within twelve months of the polling day or first polling day, as the case may be, fixed in relation to that constituency, resident therein and…(b) has good reason to believe that on account of ill-health, infirmity or other like cause…he will be prevented from attending at a polling station on any such polling day…may apply to the constituency registrar for that constituency for a postal ballot." The remainder of section 53 discusses postal ballots in further detail.


 
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