ZESN - Promoting Democratic Elections in Zimbabwe with a copy of the voters' roll, including a 29 consolidated roll. observed inspection at 693 ICs. The law clearly stipulates that the voters' roll is a public document and open to inspection by the public. However, during the inspection period ZESN observers noted that: 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 voters' roll was not posted for inspection outside ICs and people could only check their names by handing their identity documents to the inspection staff. The impact of this was that voters could not check for friends or family or provide objections to the Inspection Centre staff. This public scrutiny of the roll is important for removal of ineligible voters by reason of multiple registration, death or non-residence. Apart from the fact that the voters' roll was not displayed for public inspection, the major problem witnessed was shortage of some of the materials required to make changes or add new registrants to the voters' roll. Observers encountered ICs where the Voter Registration Data Correction Form (VR 1) and Transfer Form (VR 3) were missing 15% of the ICs where ZESN deployed observers. This was high especially at the beginning of the inspection 32 period . 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 webbased 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 bulk 31 SMSs sent out by the ZEC . An exclusion list produced by ZEC had a total 11 018 registrants, with the following breakdown: 5 326 deceased, 3 077 multiple registrations and 2 615 with incorrect ID numbers. ZEC did not have regulations for the inspection process and hence procedures were not uniformly applied by officials. Of the centres visited by ZESN LTOs, 18% were inaccessible for Persons with Disabilities (PWDs). LTOs also observed that political party agents were largely absent at most ICs. 6.8 De-duplication Process The Electoral Act states, in Section 32, that the Commission shall ensure that no person is registered as a voter more than once on the voters' roll for any one polling station. However, in the event that 'the Commission is satisfied that a voter is registered more than once on the voters' roll for any polling station, the Commission shall remove the duplicate or multiple names of the voter so that the name of that voter appears only once, and on the appropriate polling station voters' roll.’33 ZESN observed the inspection of the provisional voters' roll by deploying 210 LTOs. The LTOs 30 The term provisional voters' roll was widely used even though the term is non-existent in the electoral law. https://www.zimbabwesituation.com/news/2018-polls-4-8m-inspect-voters-roll/ http://www.zesn.org.zw/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ZESN-Report-on-the-Inspection.pdf 33 Section 32 of the Electoral Act 2:13 31 32 27 REPORT ON THE 30 JULY 2018 HARMONISED ELECTIONS ZESN