Executive Summary

In terms of the Constitution and Electoral Laws of Zimbabwe, in the normal course of events, the country conducts harmonised elections every five years. Following the end of the five-year term of the government that was elected in 2013, Zimbabweans went to polls on 30 July 2018. This report presents ZESN’s observations of each sector of the electoral cycle: the pre-election, the polling, and the post-election periods. The observations were gathered through the deployment of 7240 trained observers: 210 Long Term Observers (LTOs), who primarily focused on observing and reporting on the pre and post-election periods in all the country’s 210 National Assembly constituencies from 18 May to 31 August 2018; 750 Sample Based Observers (SBOs) who observed at randomly selected polling stations on the Election Day; and 6280 Short Term Observers (STOs), at selected polling stations in every ward. The observers were provided with checklists designed to guide the collection of relevant data…more