There are 587,941 more registered voters than there are voting age adults in Mozambique, the National Elections Commission admitted this morning. And it stressed that the figure is really  larger, because  communication difficulties mean not all brigades have reported.

Figures released today show that just five provinces account for the huge number of ghost voters. As five years ago, the most extreme province is Gaza, which registered two-thirds of the national ghost voters. It has 389,289 more voters than the province has adults. Maputo province registered 105% of adults, Nampula 103%, Manica 102%, and Cabo Delgado 100% (with one district not reporting yet).

But we estimate the real number of ghosts is over a million. Registration is high in Mozambique because the voters card serves as an identity document, but normally registration is under 95%. Seven provinces have registration over 95% of voting age adults, totally 1,124,776 ghost voters.

The National Statistics Institute (Instituto Nacional de Estatística, INE) calculated that there are 16,217,816 voting age adults inside Mozambique, but 16,390,471 have so far been reported registered, CNE said.