User:Mangwanani/2018

The 2018 Zimbabwean general election was held in Zimbabwe on 30 July 2018 for the presidency and to set the membership of the 9th Parliament, consisting of the Senate and National Assembly.

Presidential Election
The results of the Presidential election were announced on 2 August 2023 – 3 days after the election – by the Honourable Mrs Justice Priscilla Makanyara Chigumba, spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC). The following day, Nelson Chamisa, leader of the  MDC Alliance called the results "fake", stating that they would not accept "this fiction" and that the party would "pursue all means necessary – legal and constitutional – to make sure that [they] protect the people’s vote"

In the days that followed, there were protests by members of the MDC Alliance. The army opened fire on demonstrators and bystanders killing six people. Many opposition supporters were arrested, according to opposition leaders and human rights groups.

On 10 August, it was announced that Mnangagwa's inauguration, which had been scheduled for 12 August, would be delayed after Chamisa petitioned to challenge the election results in the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe, with a ruling due by the end of the month.

ZEC published ten Excel spreadsheets on their website, breaking down the presidential results by constituency with the results broken down by polling station - 10,985 polling stations in total. By 17 August, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) had analysed these constituency results and identified that 365 pieces of information were missing. The ZESN also identified duplicate polling stations as well as 12 polling stations that had duplicate results with nearby polling stations. Additionally, there were 10 polling stations that had a turnout of 100% or more, the most notable being Chiredzi Town Council Ward 7, which reported a turnout of 182.7%. However in spite of the many errors identified by the ZESN, they concluded that, "The files are not without errors. But these are relatively few in number to systematically benefit any candidate."

On 24 August the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe handed down the judgment in Chamisa's challenge of the results. The judgment of the court also acknowledged that there had been errors in the figures supplied by ZEC both before and after the election. One such error pertained to the number of registered voters, which had been declared before the election to be 5,695,706 but which was in fact 5,695,936 due to 230 voters who had been registered during a BVR registration exercise in Chegutu, Mashonaland West Province, prior to the cut-off date for the registration of voters. The Court ultimately declared that "The correction of the mathematical errors in the number of the votes announced as having been received by the first respondent by the Commission had no effect at all on the result of the Presidential election and the declaration of the first respondent [Mnangagwa] to be duly elected as President of the Republic of Zimbabwe."

Emmerson Mnangwa was duly sworn in as President of Zimbabwe on 26 August at the National Sports Stadium in Harare.

By 31 August, ZEC had amended the ten spreadsheets that broke down the presidential election results by polling station, correcting many of the errors that the ZESN had identified, although the final totals in summary at the bottom of each sheet still contained some tabulation errors, where certain cells had been left out of the final totals.