ZESN Report on the 31 July 2013 Harmonised Elections to polling stations and vote. This could be an indication of intimidation and coercion to make sure people voted in a particular way. There were also reports of ballot papers running out in some places where voting was stopped while more papers was delivered by ZEC officials. In some cases, some ballot papers were missing at the beginning of voting and throughout the day, which resulted in voting being delayed until ballot papers were available. No information was provided as to why they were missing. Observers reported many voters who were voting using the voter registration slips as their names did not appear in the voters’ roll. There has been increased speculation on the use of these slips with allegations that false slips were used to bloat the number of voters. The voting of special vote applicants that had not voted on special vote also caused speculations of double voting with allegations that those that had voted earlier in the special vote had not had their names crossed on the voters’ roll during special. Critical Incidents on Election Day On Election Day, ZESN observers reported critical incidents during the voting process, from set up of the polling station to the counting of ballots. Mobile observers also reported incidents occurring away from polling stations, while others reported on incidents at collation centres at the constituency and provincial levels. A critical incident is defined as an event or occurrence that undermines the secrecy of the ballot, the validity of the vote or the credibility of the electoral process. Observers reported a total of 771 critical incidents relating to Election Day processes, ranging from denial of access to polling stations, to serious problems with the conduct of various processes. The largest numbers of incidents occurred in Manicaland (19 per cent) and Midlands (15 per cent) while the lowest was recorded in Masvingo and Matebeleland North with (4per cent) each. Forty-one observers reported being denied access to observe at polling stations by the presiding officer. For example at Kagore Primary School, in Nyanga North, in Manicaland, when the ZESN observer arrived at the polling station at by 6 am there were three polling officials present. The presiding officer60 arrived after 10 ten minutes and told the observer that she was not allowed to observe from inside the polling station but from 50 metres away from the station. Surprisingly the presiding officer told the observer that this was an instruction from the multi-party Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (JOMIC). 60 Name withheld. 63 | P a g e