would have registered. In addition, an SMS facility could also be used as is the case in South Africa, Liberia, Uganda and many other countries, so as to reach out to more people, particularly those who may not have access to the internet. ZEC and other stakeholders need to step up efforts to increase awareness on the importance of the upcoming voters’ roll inspection exercise to ensure that registered voters verify that their details were correctly captured in the preliminary voters’ roll. Gaps in electoral Procedures There is urgent need for the Commission to share detailed regulations and guidelines for data management, voters’ roll inspection and deduplication processes in order to allay stakeholder fears. For instance, it is unclear how a determination will be made by the Commission as to which entry will be kept in the event that a registrant is found to have registered more than once. The procedures to be followed by both ZEC and registrants when dealing with queries that relate to the accuracy of entries in the preliminary voters’ roll are also not clearly stated at law. Recommendations: 1. ZEC needs to add registration centers located at the sub-district level and other high traffic areas to the list of centers that will remain open after the end of the mop up exercise. 2. ZEC needs to ensure that Provincial and District centers where continuous voter registration occurs remained open to the public and are manned by a dedicated teams of BVR kits operators. 3. ZEC needs to ensure that its registration centers are open throughout the advertised times. 4. There is need to consider the introduction of technological innovations for the inspections of the voters’ roll such as online and SMS platforms. 5. ZEC must liaise with the Registrar General in the quest to provide national identity documents such as long birth certificates to disadvantaged groups such as aliens to enable them to register. 6. ZEC should ensure that the BVR exercise updates are provided in a format that is disaggregated by various filters such as province, constituencies, age and sex among others. 7. ZEC needs to share with stakeholders all regulations pertaining to data management, deduplication and inspection of the voters’ roll to increase stakeholders understanding of these important processes. PROMOTING DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS IN ZIMBABWE ZESN Chairperson Mr Andrew Makoni: +263772234891 ZESN Director Mrs Rindai Chipfunde Vava: +263712415902 5|Page