HARARE, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Independent election watchdog the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) said Thursday the bio-metric voters roll for the July 30 elections does not have anomalies that affect a large percentage of registrants.
Zimbabwe compiled a bio-metric voters' roll for the first time for the July 30 polls to enhance credibility of the polls given that previous elections have been marred by allegations of vote fraud.
ZESN said while no voters roll is perfect, a less rushed process would have allowed more time for the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to identify and address anomalies.
"In terms of accuracy, the audit did not identify anomalies in the 2018 Voters Roll that affected a large percentage of registrants or were they concentrated amongst registrants of a particular area, gender or age," ZESN said in a statement after completing an audit of the voters roll that contains 5.6 million people.
ZESN assessed the voters roll on accuracy, currency and completeness and in comparison to the 2013 voters' roll and census data.
The watchdog said the 2018 voters roll was more current than the 2013 preliminary voters roll.
"In terms of completeness, the 2018 voters roll is more inclusive than the 2013 preliminary voters roll which was with generally higher registration rates," it said.
The findings by ZESN come as the opposition MDC Alliance has rejected the voters' roll saying it was not credible.
Another independent group calling itself "Team Pachedu" carried out an audit of the same voters roll and claimed that it was not clean and contains about 250,000 "ghost voters".
ZEC chairperson Priscilla Chigumba has refuted the claims, saying the Commission had checked all the alleged ghosts and was satisfied that the voters who had the same names and dates of birth were unique individuals with unique photographs and fingerprints.
