A “provisional voters’ roll” was available for inspection between 19 and 29 May 2018. The ZEC set up 10 807 Inspection Centres (ICs) and 2019 registration centres. While ZEC laudably introduced innovations to enable voters to easily inspect the roll, for example the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Short Messaging Service (SMS), and a web-based allocation, it was not possible for members of the public to scrutinize the roll. At the end of inspection, 4 770 405 people had checked their registration details, 694 030 physically went to the ICs, 819 935 used USSD *265#, and 3 256 440 verified through bulk SMSs sent out by ZEC. An exclusion list produced by ZEC had a total 11 018 registrants with the following breakdown: 5 326deceased;3 077 multiple registrations; and 2 615 people with incorrect identification numbers. The Nomination Courts sat on 14 June 2018 to receive applications from nominees for presidential, National Assembly, and local authority elections. The nomination process was conducted in a peaceful environment and there were efforts to open on time and close late at most courts. However, despite having promised to do so, ZEC did not provide the voters’ roll before the sitting of the Nomination Courts, placing a question mark against the legality of the process. Furthermore, this affected some nominees who only realised on the day of the sitting of the courts that some of their statutorily required subscribers to their nominations did not appear to have lodged claims to register as voters. Some other nominees also had their applications rejected, either because their claims for registration could not be found or because of inconsistencies between the claimant’s details and the information held by ZEC that was being used on nomination day. In the case of aspiring councillors, some nominations were rejected as they had sought to contest the elections in wards different to those in which had sought registration. CSOs played several roles around the electoral cycle. ZESN coordinated six clusters of CSOs that focused on Election Monitoring and Observation, CVE, Legal and Medical Services, Oversight and Advocacy, Media and Elections, and Conflict Management. Amongst the clusters’ interventions were activities relating to CVE; monitoring and observation of electoral processes and the political environment; early warning systems; advocacy initiatives on electoral reform and advocacy programmes targeting the electorate in particular women; and youth’s participation, among others. The work of CSOs was guided by the CSOs elections strategy produced in February 2017. Consequently, some reforms were instituted that include the removal of the requirement for an electoral officer to witness how a visually impaired person votes; a more comprehensive Electoral Code of Conduct for political parties, and abolishment of the use of voter registration certificates (registration slips) where a person’s name does not appear on a voters’ roll. Further, several CSOs conducted public and candidates debates around electoral issues including ZESN which conducted a series of debates named “Making Elections Make Sense”. ZESN also convened the Election Situation Room, bringing together a number of CSOs two months before the election, to enhance coordinated and effective information sharing on electoral processes. Thus the ESR was operative before, during, and after the election, monitoring the environment and ensuring rapid response to electoral issues by engaging the responsible institutions. 13 | P a g e