12. Assisted voting: Final numbers of assisted voters have not been ascertained on a constituency‐by‐constituency basis, with ZEC providing a global figure of 207,000 assisted voters. This is not on the face of it an unjustifiably large number, being less than 10% of all votes cast in a country with 90% literacy. However, the number of 207,000 has not been confirmed by polling agents and observers, and as ZEC has not provided the number by constituency, we simply have to take their figure at face value. The inability of polling agents and observers to verify this ‐ or any figure relating to the election for that matter ‐ is a severe failing on their part.  Forced to make assisted votes: there have been general and specific reports of literate voters forced to ask for ‘help’ from known ZANU PF functionaries, to ensure they voted ‘the right way’.118  Observers report correct use of this vote: while many assisted votes may have been coerced, others were genuinely needed and were made in accordance with the statute, meaning that individuals were free to choose who they wanted to assist them with the vote, and were able to vote confidentially. Others observed assisted votes being made for the opposition.  While in any country, information on assisted voting should be available on a completely transparent basis from government for the benefit of all citizens and political parties, it is also a fact that the opposition had polling agents in every polling station in the country, and that this information should have been collated by every party. There were 20,000 independent monitors deployed across the country, and while they were not in every polling station, they covered a sufficient proportion to have given another view on what happened with regard to how many voters were turned away, and how many people made assisted votes. The fact they have not been able to provide this information is, again, a serious failure on their part. POST ELECTION EVENTS  The High Court of Zimbabwe ruled in ZEC’s favour that they were not obligated to provide the MDC‐T with the final voting patterns by constituency and polling station. The failure to receive this information from ZEC was a major factor in MDC T withdrawing their electoral challenge to the Presidential result – but if their own polling agents had done their job properly, they would not have had to rely on ZEC for this information but would have had their own record of what happened by polling station.  The presidential voting pattern per constituency has never been released, only a global percentage stating that Robert Mugabe received 61% of the vote to Morgan Tsvangirayi’s 36% and Welshman Ncube’s 2.7%. Again – MDC‐T cannot challenge these global results as their polling agents did not systematically return their V11 forms with details of the vote per station and constituency to independently verify what was happening.                                                              118 Sokwanele lists 53 such instances, some specific, some general.   55