during the phased BVR blitz. In addition, widespread misinformation and intimidation of registrants were reported throughout the four phases and mop-up of the BVR exercise. Intimidatory tactics employed by some political contestants include the recording of registrants’ registration slips’ serial numbers with a warning that their political party would be able to track individual voting preferences on Election Day. 6.7 Inspection of the Voters’ Roll Section 17 of the Electoral Act states that: “Voter registration shall be conducted on a continuous basis so as to keep the voters’ roll up to date”. This means that voter registration should happen throughout the electoral cycle. Once the roll has been compiled, Section 21of the Act stipulates that the voters’ roll is a public document and open to inspection by the public, free of charge during ordinary office hours and the Commission shall, within a reasonable period, provide any person who requests the roll and pays the prescribed fee, with a copy of the voters’ roll, including a consolidated roll.29 The Commission is obliged to provide every political party that intends to contest the election, and any accredited observer who requested the voters’ roll after paying the prescribed fee. The Act also stipulates that, within a reasonable time after nomination, the Commission shall provide every candidate with one copy of the roll in electronic form for the election for which the candidate is nominated or, upon payment of the prescription fee, a candidate shall receive a printed copy of the voters’ roll for the election for which the candidate has been nominated. The Act also adds that, where a voters’ roll is in electronic form, it should be in a format that can be searched and analysed but should be in a form that does not allow it to be altered. The inspection of the “provisional voters’ roll”30 was conducted from 19 to 29 May 2018. ZEC had a budget of US$18 million to cover all logistical and administrative costs, such as transport, materials, allowances, and other costs associated with the inspection process. The ZEC set up 10 807 Inspection Centres (ICs) and 2019 registration centres. To ease the burden on the ICs, ZEC created varied platforms to facilitate rapid inspection of the voters’ roll in the set timeframe, namely Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Short Message Services (SMS), and a web-based platform. By the time of inspection, 5.4 million had registered. At the end of inspection, 4 770 405 had checked their registration details: 694 030 physically went to the ICs, 819 935 used USSD *265#, and 3 256 440 verified through 29 Section 21 of the Electoral Act. The term provisional voters’ roll was widely used even though the term is non-existent in the electoral law. 30 37 | P a g e