financial hurdles that impeded the accreditation of observers. Perhaps the OAC should be decentralised or the requirement for observers to physically present themselves at accreditation centres could be removed. 5.8 Postal Voting According to Section 72 0f the Electoral Act, postal voting is a process where a voter who is based outside the country on government business, or their spouse or a person on duty as a member of a disciplined force or an electoral officer, is unable to vote at a polling station in the constituency and requests to vote earlier. The postal voting procedure as set out in the Act states that anyone who requires to vote by post would apply to the ZEC and, once approved, the Commission would post the ballot papers to the said person who would vote in secret and post the ballot papers back to ZEC. Over 7 200 people, the majority of them diplomats, applied for postal voting in the July 30 elections22.Suspicions arose during the postal voting process as widespread allegations were made that police officers were required to vote in front of their superiors and in what appeared as a polling station within the cantonment areas. Bulawayo was cited as one of the provinces where such incidents were reported by observers from ZESN and other CSOs. ZEC had not indicated, on its electoral calendar, the specific dates when postal voting would be conducted. 6 VOTER REGISTRATION In accordance with Section 36A of the Electoral Act Chapter 2:13, the President, on advice of the Commission, ‘may at any time proclaim in the Gazette an order that there shall be a new registration of voters’. Hence, on 9 September2017 the then President, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, proclaimed that BVR would start on 14 September of 2017.’23The ZEC went further to issue Statutory Instrument 85 of 2017 ‘Electoral (Voter Registration) Regulations’ to set out the voter registration regulations and procedure. The BVR was used to enrol people on the voters’ roll for the first time in Zimbabwe. It was also the first time that ZEC conducted the voter registration, having assumed this role from the Registrar General. Furthermore, a polling station based voting system was used for the first time in harmonised elections. 22 https://www.herald.co.zw/7-200-apply-for-postal-voting/ ZESN Biometric Voter Registration Observation Report Available at: http://www.zesn.org.zw/wpcontent/uploads/2015/10/ZESN-BVR-Observation-Report.pdf 23 32 | P a g e