The results of the presidential election will be released within five days of votes being counted, a senior official of the Zimbabwe Election Commission confirmed.
The commission is well prepared to handle the polls - a date for which is expected to be set this week - should they spill over into an election run-off, said commissioner Qhubani Moyo.
"The parliamentary and council results will be known as soon as poll counting or recounting is done," Moyo said in an interview this week.
The election commission has battled to win the public's support since the hotly disputed 2008 presidential election, whose results were delayed by over a month.In that contest, the late Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change won the first round of voting, but fell short of the 50% plus one vote needed to push out then-president Robert Mugabe, and the election was rerun.
A lot more is at stake in this year's election, when Zimbabwe will for the first time use biometric voter system technology.
Moyo said the technology "eliminates any possibility of fraud using the voters roll" as it weeds out double registrations - people voting twice because they are registered in more than one place.
The commission has embarked on a charm offensive to undo the damage of the past.
"We inherited a burden in that in the previous elections, especially 2008 results, were announced a few weeks later and every time we engage the public they remind us of that. It is hard to change the public's perception but through stakeholder meetings we have addressed that issue," said Moyo.
The current electoral commission was appointed by Mugabe in 2016 and its chairwoman, Justice Rita Makarau, resigned in December.
She was replaced by Justice Priscilla Chigumba in February.
Moyo said since Mugabe's resignation the commission had enjoyed autonomy, with no interference from the new government.
Nonetheless, fears of election rigging are a topical issue, with the MDC Alliance's Nelson Chamisa alleging that "secret" ballots printed for the 2013 election could be used in this year's polls.
Calls for transparency in ballot printing have increased, amid an understanding that a South African firm will provide the paper and a local company will print the ballots for the commission.
"We will let all political parties that pass through the nomination court come witness the printing of ballot papers ... it's not their legal right [but we have] allowed them so as to address suspicions that are there," said Moyo...