The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has reiterated its commitment to achieving accuracy in the process of capturing the votes counted in the 2024 National and Provincial Elections.
On Thursday evening, the Commission held a briefing at the National Results Operation Centre (ROC) in Midrand, Gauteng, where it detailed the latest developments in the capturing and verification process following the General Election held on Wednesday, 29 May.
Earlier on Thursday, the IEC said in a briefing that with vote counting having been concluded, each voting station would embark on a process of finalising its results.
READ | Process to finalise Elections 2024 voting station results underway
At the time of the briefing at 8pm on Thursday, IEC General Manager Granville Abrahams said the overall percentage of votes captured on the results system stood at 55.6%.
Abrahams explained that the reason the new developments were not appearing immediately on the leaderboard at the ROC is that the Commission was still verifying them to ensure accuracy.
"To achieve accuracy, we have various processes, the first one being the capturing of the results. The results slips have been received after being checked, [as well as being] scanned and audited," Abrahams said.
Given that this was the first time there were three ballots in the National and Provincial Elections (i.e. National Ballot, Regional or Province-to-National Ballots and Provincial Ballots), Abrahams said the Commission had anticipated that the counting process would take longer.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
READ | Voters urged to familiarise themselves with three ballot papers
"We did expect that we will take longer this year and to that extent, we did share with the media that we have planned to have the results announcement on Sunday. Normally, we would have it on Saturday," Abrahams said.
Abrahams said the results will continue to trickle in throughout the night.
"That is a positive sign from the smaller municipalities. Based on what we have on the system, we are sitting on a 58.69% voter turnout, so we are hovering just below 60% of voter turnout, with bigger stations' results still to come in," he said.
The Commission reported an incident where one ballot box, containing votes that had already been counted, went missing in transit from the voting station Matamzana Dube School in VD 43412767, KZN282, uMhlathuze.
The IEC appealed to citizens in and around Ward 14 uMhlathuze, KwaZulu-Natal, to be on the lookout for the IEC branded ballot box.
"The Commission is required to retain ballot boxes for a period of six months before disposing of them. We are quite eager to get back that ballot box so that it can be placed in storage," Abrahams said.
The ballot box got lost while it was being transported in an open vehicle and it was discovered when they got to the destination that it was missing.
"I wish to emphasise that those votes have been counted and they have been recorded on the results slip," said Abrahams.
