5 Studies and investigative researches on the state of the voters’ roll in the country have revealed that the register’s state is not that pleasing. An audit of the voters’ roll used for the 2005 general election revealed that, about 800 000 deceased voters still appeared on the voters’ register while 300 000 duplicate voters continued to taint the credibility of the voter’s roll. These figures came out of a study of the voters’ register in two constituencies, Uzumba Maramba Pfungwe (UMP) and Harare North, by Whitehead, Freezim Support Group in 2004 and the findings were extrapolated to come up with national projections on the noted irregularities (www. Kubatana.net). With such inaccuracies noted on the voters’ roll, it was incumbent upon ZEC to implore the office of the Registrar General to come up with an updated voters’ roll before any registration of new voters could be undertaken, and such a list could have been availed to all stakeholders for inspection and thorough scrutiny. This is important in two ways. Firstly, because it defies logic to just add new voters on a list that is already corrupt and littered with glaring inaccuracies, and secondly, because an updated voters’ roll at the beginning of the exercise would provide guidelines as to the actual number of registered voters in the country, and if used with other citizen registers from the registrar general’s office, could provide valuable information on the number of people eligible to vote but are not yet registered. These would form the target group for the voter registration exercise and provide justification for the time needed to undertake the exercise and the amount of human capital needed to effectively carry out the programme. Ladies and Gentlemen, with the current voter registration, no one knows the target group, the amount of people projected to benefit from the exercise and whether the cut-off date of 17 August 2007 is feasible with regards to the number of people intending to register. Already, visits by ZESN to Nyachuru and Copley schools in Mazowe Disctrict of Mashonaland Central Province have revealed technical hiccups that could have been avoided had consultative meetings and projections on the number of new voters been carried out prior to the exercise. Registration was observed to be slow owing to the shortage of national identity card waiting passes as well as bad weather, which affected the taking and processing of pictures for the identity cards.