ZESN - Promoting Democratic Elections in Zimbabwe The Act further states that no notice is required to be given of the Commission's action before or after removing any duplicate or multiple names of any voter. Section 35 states that if a voter is aggrieved by the removal of their name during the process of compiling the voters' roll, they can appeal against the decision to a designated magistrate in their province. While the aforementioned provisions are welcome, the stipulation that 'no notice has to be given' is contrary to the tenets of administrative justice as a voter should have the opportunity to make representations before his/her name is removed from the roll, and not after. Though there is an option of appealing to a designated magistrate of the province, this process is rather cumbersome and the aggrieved party is unlikely to get redress in time to get their name enlisted back on the voters' 34 roll.' public confidence in the integrity of the roll was significantly reduced. ZEC also took no action against those who had registered twice or outside their constituencies of residence, undermining the deterrent effect intended by the Act in making these violations of electoral law an offence. 6.9 Voters' Roll Section 239 (d) (e) of the Constitution provides that ZEC must compile the voters' rolls and registers and ensure the proper custody and maintenance. The Electoral Act provides that ZEC shall keep and maintain, in printed and electronic form, a voters' roll for each polling station. Section 21 of the Electoral Act also provides for ZEC to make provision of the voters' roll to stakeholders. More specifically the clauses state that; (4) Within a reasonable period of time after the calling of an election, the Commission shall provide, on payment of the prescribed fee, to every political party that intends to contest the election, and to any accredited observer who requests it, one copy of every voters' roll to be used in the election, either in printed or in electronic form as the party or observer may request. (6) Within a reasonable period of time after nomination day in an election, the Commission shall provide— a. free of charge, to every nominated candidate, one copy in electronic form of the voters' roll to be used in the election for which the candidate has been nominated; and b. at the request of any nominated candidate, and on payment of the prescribed fee, one copy in printed form of the voters' roll to be used in the election for which the candidate has been nominated. (7) Where a voters' roll is provided in electronic form in terms of subsection (3), (4), or (6) its format shall be such as allows its contents to be searched and analysed. Deceased persons, those who had registered more than once, and entries with incorrect ID numbers were included on an exclusion list produced by ZEC. Since ZEC is under no obligation to inform registrants that their names have been removed from the voters' roll, as many as 5 692 persons on the exclusion list could have been disenfranchised without their knowledge as, on Election Day, their names appeared on the exclusion list rather than the voters' roll. The de-duplication process was shrouded in secrecy. Despite repeated requests, ZEC did not provide feedback to stakeholders on the results of the de-duplication process. As a result, there was no certainty that the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) system had been run against every single voter entry to clearly identify and eliminate duplicates despite a specific request to ZEC to remove doubts that had arisen in this regard. In the interests of the constitutional requirement of transparency, ZEC should have availed the logs from the AFIS scan for inspection. ZEC's claim that it had unique bio-metric data for each entry on the roll thus carried no weight and 34 'Analysis of the Electoral Amendment act of 28 may 2018 and Outstanding Reforms ahead of the 30 July 2018 elections' 28 REPORT ON THE 30 JULY 2018 HARMONISED ELECTIONS ZESN