ZIMBABWE ELECTION SUPPORT NETWORK
Voters’ Roll Inspection UPDATE - NUMBER 1
23 May 2018 –As part of its oversight role on electoral processes, ZESN has been closely
tracking developments related to the ongoing inspection of the Provisional Voters’ Roll
(PVR) exercise which commenced on 19 May 2018 and scheduled to end on 29 May 2018.
This update is based on reports from ZESN’s 210 Observers deployed to the National
Assembly Constituencies and covers the period 19th to the 22nd of May 2018.
General Environment
The general environment has remained calm and peaceful and no cases of violence or
disturbances have been recorded by ZESN observers.
Observer Accreditation
ZESN commends ZEC for creating mechanisms that allow for observers to be accredited for
a longer period. The ZEC informed stakeholders that all observers who were accredited to
observe the BVR exercise will need to pay an additional two dollars for them to be issued
with new accreditation that would allow them to observe all electoral processes that will be
conducted until after the harmonized elections. Any new observer accreditation will also
cover the same period. However, the conduct of inspection officials regarding how they
treated observers varied with some facilitating the observer’s work by providing clarity
when needed while other inspection officials refused to grant access to observers even after
the observes had furnished them with their accreditation cards for BVR.
Voter Inspection Procedures
In addition to the static centers that ZEC opened for the purposes of voters’ roll inspection;
it is commendable that the ZEC has also employed inexpensive ways of facilitating the
inspection of the voters’ roll. Short Message Service (SMS), (Unstructured Supplementary
Service Data) USSD code and a secure internet portal has been created by the Commission
to allow for voters to check the accuracy of their details these platforms. This innovation
further decongests inspection centers.
719387 had checked their registration details as of the 22nd of May 2018 using the USSD
code during the past 4 days while 3 256 440 bulk SMS were sent by ZEC to registrants who
supplied their mobile numbers during registration
ZEC Preparedness
Deployment of inspection officials and materials was delayed. In some cases the voters roll
was not available for inspection when the inspection centers opened for instance at Zimuto
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