Member of Parliament decided to undertake a physical check of registered voters against their physical addresses for purposes of the current elections, his team was repeatedly arrested by the police. However, the limited audit that was accomplished revealed numerous “ghost” voters and duplicate entries 23 . A physical copy of the roll is only available at a prohibitive price, and candidates are required to inspect the roll in person, often having had to travel great distances to do so. On many occasions, the opposition has had to apply to the court to enforce their right to inspect the roll. An organisation called FreeZim claims to have conducted extensive research into the voters’ roll intended for the current elections by scanning parts of it into a computer. They have identified "chronic errors" on the roll that could render an accurate and democratic election on 31st March impossible. The computerized survey also indicates “incomprehensible voter registration patterns which cannot be matched to the 2002 census. In addition to the 800,000 names of dead people, another 900,000 people listed on the roll as eligible voters are not known or do not live at the addresses under which their names appear. It suggests that over two million of the 5.6 million names registered as voters are suspect - it and the roll is overstated by unrealistic proportions that cannot be ignored 24 . The group has submitted its report to the newly appointed Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.25 These finding are consistent with the earlier limited audits of the 2002 electoral roll. Prior to the 2000 elections, the President is alleged to have rejected an offer of assistance from the UNPD to help regularize the roll. e) Ballot Box Stuffing A faulty roll provides a great deal of room for electoral fraud. An inflated roll that includes dead people and duplicates entries provides ample opportunity for the stuffing of ballot boxes. Recent electoral reforms have ostensibly made stuffing more difficult. Voting will now take place over one day, reducing the time in which one can determine which boxes need “extra” votes. Counting is to be conducted at the polling stations, reducing the possibility of stuffing in transit when the boxes are out of sight of polling-station agents. Ballot boxes are to be transparent. However, these reforms depend upon the presence of independent polling agents at the polling stations to look into the transparent ballot boxes. It seems unlikely that the MDC will be able to deploy its polling agents widely enough to cover the 8,300 polling stations - twice as many polling stations as for the 2000 election 26 and which are concentrated in the rural areas 27 . 23 Independent Newspaper (Zimbabwe) 24/02/05 The MDC believes that the roll should contain as few as 3.2 million voters. See Kubatana.com Archive – How will Zanu (PF) Cheat? 25 Zimonline 4 February 2005. The results were obtained after scanning the voters’ roll page by page into a computer and digitizing it. Numerous obstacles were placed in the way of obtaining a physical copy of the roll. It took two years to obtain it from the Registrar General. See Kubatana.com Archive Voters Roll Audit where the group’s methodology and results are spelt out. 26 That election had 4,100 polling stations – see http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/Zimbabwe/0,,2-11-1662_1675516,00.html 24 10