petitions and appeals lodged with the Electoral Court should be heard. However, much was omitted in the piece meal amendments, pointing to the need for comprehensive amendment of electoral law. Outstanding issues include, inter alia, the independence of ZEC, the right to vote, and procurement and printing of ballot papers. The pre-election period also saw more visible and comprehensive Civic and Voter Education (CVE) initiatives, particularly by ZEC and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). Commendably, there had been an amendment of the law to remove the requirement for the disclosure of sources of funding by CSOs and to reverse the requirement for funding for CVE to be channelled through ZEC. A new voters’ roll was used for the elections following the Bio-metric Voters’ Registration (BVR) that was embraced for the first time in the electoral process in Zimbabwe. The BVR exercise was proclaimed, and commenced at District Centres, in September 2017. The exercise ran in four phases, from 10 October to 19 December 2017, before it was extended in a mop-up exercise between 10 January and 8 February 2018. Unfortunately, the BVR exercise was marked by misinformation and the intimidation of registrants by political actors who recorded serial numbers of registration slips under the pretext that they would be able to track voting preferences of individual voters. Despite challenges that include the proclamation of BVR dates before a voter education exercise to inform voters about the location of registration centres and the requirements needed for one to register under the BVR system; power challenges affecting the solar powered kits in a cloudy and rainy season; malfunctioning of kits, among others, the ZEC managed to register a total of 5 695 706 voters (79% of the eligible population), 3073190 of whom were women (54%) and 2 622516 (46%) men. An analysis of the final voters’ roll revealed that the total number of registrants (5695706) was lower than both the 2012 census data and the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT) 2018 projections of the voting population (18 years and above), i.e. 6805455 and 7224128, respectively. However, the total number of registrants was higher than census data in ages 40-49 years and 60-69 years, though the difference is rather insignificant. On the Final Voters’ roll (FVR), 3201447 registrants (roughly 54%) are female while 2622516 (46%) are male. The 30-34 years age group accounted for the largest total number of registrants at 781 227, followed by the 20-24 age group at 780 903 registrants. In all age groups, more women registered to vote than men. Also, there were more rural registrants than their urban counterparts, including for those aged 39 and below. While 68.2 % registered in rural areas, urban registrants accounted for 31.8% of the total registrants. The total number of urban registrants was lower than census data except for the 45-49 years age group. The audit of the voters’ roll seemed to indicate that young adults in urban areas, in particular those aged 39 and below, were under-registered compared to older generations. In rural areas, the total number of registrants was higher than census data in the 35-49 and 55-69 years age categories. About 86.3% of voters added between the release of the ‘provisional voters’ roll’ and the final voters’ roll (10159 out of 11770) were from Mashonaland West and 8.3 %of sampled respondents in the voters’ roll audit were not known at the addresses given on the voters’ roll. 12 | P a g e