Maravi

L/stone resident questions accuracy of ECZ results map

L/stone resident questions accuracy of ECZ results map
Written by Kabanda Chulu
Wednesday, November 19, 2008 6:05:28 PM

FORMER Livingstone mayor Margaret Whitehead yesterday observed that the map of election results supplied by the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) gives a flawed picture of the real outcome of last month's presidential elections.

Whitehead explained that the map supplied by the ECZ gives some idea of the popularity of the various political parties in the constituencies but that it only showed which candidate got the majority of votes in each constituency without showing the respective number of votes.

"If this was a parliamentary election, it would show the winner of each seat but in a presidential election, each vote counts, not who gets the majority per constituency and this would make sense only if we had something like the United States system, where the winner in each state gets all that state's electoral college votes," Whitehead stated.

"So the map of election results supplied by the Electoral Commission gives some idea of the popularity of the various parties in the constituencies. But it gives a flawed picture of the real outcome of the election because it is only showing which candidate got the majority of votes in each constituency, not how many votes each got."

She stated that every vote counts in a presidential election and the votes for the second, third and fourth in each constituency were important and not just the highest.

"The actual number of votes is important and any candidate who can get a reasonable number, even if not the highest, in most constituencies can beat a candidate who gets a very large number in a few, especially if there are more than two candidates," Whitehead stated.

She stated that Copperbelt and Lusaka were small on the map but had a very large number of voters and by geographical area, the MMD looks very dominant, but by number of votes the picture was very different.

"I have produced a map showing the actual numbers of votes in the various provinces. I can do it by constituency but it will be too complex and the pattern generally seems to have varied by province and from this, it can be seen that North Western and Western Provinces have relatively few voters for their area, while Copperbelt and Lusaka have large numbers," stated Whitehead.

Labels: ECZ, ELECTIONS, MARGARET WHITEHEAD

posted by MrK @ 6:08 PM