The Electoral Commission is pleased to provide the following update as at 9h today:
“There are 66 073 results slips expected from the local municipality, metros and district council votes across the 23 696 voting stations countrywide.
About 23 444 (35.5 %) of the expected results slips have been scanned through to the results system, and 22 983 (34.8 %) have been captured. Out of the results slips captured 16 791 (25.4%) have already been independently audited.
Results from 18 local municipalities (7%) have been concluded at 09h00. In a comparative election in 2021 at the same time, only seven (7) municipalities were completed. The improved capture rate is despite the longer ballot paper, the higher number of contestants, and the higher voter participation rate.
Call to Action
The Commission appeals to political parties, independent candidates and their supporters to exercise patience and allow the counting and results-capturing processes to unfold.
The Commission further urges all candidates and political role-players to refrain from spreading unverified information or disinformation about election results, as this could create unnecessary tensions, incite violence, and potentially result in damage to property and injuries.
The Commission invites citizens, the media and political contestants to follow the election results on its platforms:
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Website: www.elections.org.za“
The iEC also says: “Following a successful voting process, voting stations closed at 21h00 last night. The Electoral Commission (IEC) is satisfied that voters who were in the queues at cut-off time were afforded the opportunity to vote.
The counting, tallying and verification process continued throughout the night in the presence of political party agents, independent candidate agents and accredited observers, reinforcing the transparency, integrity and accountability of the electoral process.
Progress Report on Capturing per Province
Over the past three days, South Africans have exercised their right to choice and voice through the ballot. As indicated in yesterday evening’s brief to the media, the results capturing process is an important phase of the election results management and transmission.
It is important to underscore the procedural tenet of the counting of ballots, which is that counting happens at the voting station where the ballots were cast to ensure that every single ballot paper is accounted for at every station and duly recorded. This is an important watermark of free and fair elections.
After counting, a results slip is captured in duplicate in front of party and independent agents, as well as observers. The agents can record and make photographic images of the results slips. Similarly, the IEC makes an image of the results to facilitate retrieval by contestants where this may be required.
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From the voting station, results slips are transported in tamper-evident envelopes to the local capturing site of the Electoral Commission. Capturing involves stringent quality assurance measures, including double-blind capturing of the result slips, scanning of the results slips into the results system, and auditing by independent auditors on the total population of results. This means that the audit is not sampled, but the entire results are subjected to this important assurance measure.
Another important layer to the process is the use of an automated result system process to check possible anomalies such as excessive voter turnout, or variance in votes for a party in the same voting station.”
