Commission assures the country that 97% of the local government election results have been captured.
THE ELECTORAL Commission of SA (IEC) has allayed fears that there were delays in finalising the results of Monday’s local government elections.
IEC national senior manager for electoral operations Granville Abrahams assured the country at the national results operations centre that the commission was slowly but surely coming to an end with the results process.
“The current level of capturing is sitting at 96.9% of all results, it’s in the system, it’s captured. There is no counting. I want to emphatically state there is no counting happening, counting is complete,” he said.
Abrahams said the remaining 3.1% was primarily focused in KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Gauteng.
“We have, however, expedited Gauteng, which should be done very soon, by providing additional capacity as far as the capturing phase is concerned. So the capturing phase should be done very soon,” he said.
According to Abrahams, 62,161 of the result slips have been captured and 53,209 of those have been scanned into an image and thus available.
“And the completion rate is varying from province to province. In the Northern Cape we have 95.5%, 88% in the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape 83%, Mpumalanga 85.4% and in the Free State 87%. In the rest of the provinces it ranges between 60% and 80%,” he said.
Abrahams said the IEC remains committed to finalising the results expeditiously while taking care to ensure that all necessary verification is enforced.
He added that the number of completed municipalities stood at 139 out of the country’s 257 municipalities.
At a national political liaison committee meeting, according to Abrahams, it was agreed that the process must be explained and the country informed that all results have been transcribed onto result slips at the IEC’s local offices.
Abrahams said there were auditors at all the capturing sites and there was a national audit manager monitoring the operations.
”These are independent auditors, it’s not the internal audit function of the IEC. It’s external, independent auditors, who then verify whatever is on the form is in fact what was captured in the system,” he explained.
Abrahams warned that no one could rush the auditors. “The auditors have to do their work, it is essential that they do so independently without any pressure from the IEC,” he said.
Abrahams said the IEC process was not late and that such claims were due to the commission setting the bar very high in the past.
“In terms of legislation, the results must be announced within seven days. In fact, we can also approach the Electoral Court if we require more time. So we are not late.”
– Political Bureau
