and currency.2 The audit found that there was a reduction in the number of registered voters for the Constituency. The 2013 provisional voters’ roll (PVR) for Mutoko North, had 29 643 registered persons. The voting population dropped by 21% in 2018 as the number of registered persons dropped to 23 295. The number of persons in the current voters’ roll who previously registered in past elections stood at 13 538. The audit also revealed that the 2013 voters’ roll for Mutoko North had 119 cases of persons sharing both names, dates of birth, gender, and polling station. Further, the audit showed that the oldest registrant provided their year of birth as 1908 and the 2018 full voters’ roll for Mutoko North had 10 (0, 04%) registrants who were above 100 years, down from 400 registered in 2013. Overall, the audit revealed a progressive improvement in the quality of the current roll when compared to the rolls used in previous elections especially the 2013 PVR. The database used to store the data and the application used to capture the data appeared to have validation checks as there were very few mistakes in the capture of records. There are no significant changes in the data presented for use in the 24th November 2018 by-election when compared to the data used in the 30th July 2018 election. However, while the few changes recorded allude to the fact that there is an active process to add, update, remove and transfer voters– it’s not clear when biometric deduplication is executed. The case of the duplication of Tonny Zisengwe (48-049846 -S48) is evidence that the process is not run as often. The process of deduplication should be run before each electoral event. While the roll is largely representative of the population of Mutoko North since the differences between the actual registered voters and the projected registered voters is not significant –ZEC should strive to ensure that they reduce the gap between the actual population and the registered voters. 6.4. Pre-Election Political Environment A free, fair, credible election takes place where the electoral playing field is even for all contestants and where voters enjoy all the fundamental freedoms that they are entitled to in the pre-election, election, and post-election periods. On the positive, the two by-elections were held against the background of a relatively peaceful pre-election environment. ZESN LTOs who observed the pre-election period did not report on any incident of election-related violence. Noteworthy is the initiative by a local CBO in Mutoko North, the Youth Initiatives Mutoko to organise sports tournaments in Ward 2 where the electorate was urged to participate peacefully in the by-election and t-shirts and flyers distributed on 17 November, 2018. 2 http://www.zesn.org.zw/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/A-comparative-analysis-of-the-Mutoko-NorthConstituency-Voters-Roll.pdf 12