Mundubile says the election was rigged. His own numbers don't back it up, but independent monitors found real problems anyway.

## The claim Mundubile says the election was rigged and that his campaign has "sufficient grounds to prove" it. He points to three provinces, Southern, Western and North-Western, where he says his own G20 observer teams recorded different numbers than the ones the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) certified. His clearest example is Wusakile constituency: | Wusakile constituency | Mundubile's campaign tally | ECZ certified result | |---|---|---| | Votes for Mundubile | 17,274 | 17,196 | | Votes for Hichilema | 7,800 | 22,273 | ## Testing the claim Mundubile's Wusakile numbers are not supported, in anything published so far, by polling station forms or agent tally sheets, the kind of paper record that would let anyone else check them. Beyond Wusakile, his campaign has cited categories of concern, problems with ballot paper handling and transport, mismatches between polling-station results and later announcements, without naming further specific constituencies or figures. He has also said "further details" of the legal case will follow. The bigger problem for the claim is arithmetic. An electoral expert consulted on the numbers points out that even if every one of Hichilema's votes in the entire Southern Province were removed, Mundubile would still not have enough votes to win. Hichilema's certified margin, 60.49% to Mundubile's 37.87%, is large enough that no plausible combination of irregularities in the three provinces Mundubile names would flip the result. As things stand, the specific rigging claim Mundubile has made publicly does not hold up. ## What independent monitors actually found That is not the same as saying nothing went wrong. The Christian Churches Monitoring Group (CCMG) ran a statistical audit called PRVT, using 1,500 observers stationed at a representative sample of polling stations nationwide, with a 99.4% response rate. It flagged 30 constituencies with irregular patterns. In Lusangazi Central, the official turnout was 66.4%, against a CC