The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) is determined to complete at least 90% of the vote counting this evening.

IEC Chief Electoral Officer Sy Mamabolo said this during a media briefing on the commission’s progress in capturing the results of the 2021 Local Government Elections.

According to Mamabolo, by 7:30pm on Tuesday, at least 55% of the results had been finalised.

“The Northern Cape has completed 89% of its results, followed by Western Cape at 72% and in third position comes the Eastern Cape at 70%. The rest of the provinces completion rate range between 37% and 67%.

“At the level of capturing 78% of results are already in the system waiting [for] scanning and auditing. We are still pursuing the target of reaching the 90% still in the course of tonight,” he said.

Mamabolo said the results of at least 94 municipalities had been completed and emphasised that the commission would “spare no effort that the majority of the 163 municipalities are completed” by Thursday.

IEC Commissioner Mosotho Moepya said the commission is dealing with matters related to the absence of some registered voters from the voters’ roll during Monday’s Election Day.

“I accept that there were people who were not on the voters’ roll…those that we knew and we had records of, we have included on there and we indicated that out of the 240 000, 140 000 of them we can account for by name of having come and having voted,” he said.

On allegations of votes being cast illegally, Moepya said those allegations can be brought forward for investigation by the commission. He also assured South Africans that the integrity of the results is not in danger.

“Where someone has evidence on the numbers that are presented, there are processes and we will deal with those numbers. But we are not going to account for persons who have not come. The numbers…are in fact those numbers that are beyond doubt. By the time they get there, they’ve been audited, they get checked and they’ve gone through a whole set of integrity tests. That means that the persons who are alleged to have been voting or not voting – we’ve dealt with them in the results.

“In every election that we have conducted…when voting closes and counting begins there’s a lot of apprehension understandably. We are very careful to be defensive but we work hard to bring certainty to the nation and to the world as soon as possible,” he said.

Source: South African Government News Agency