After three days of ballot counting and capturing results, the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has confirmed that almost 90% of the votes have been calculated as of Wednesday evening.

Addressing the media, Chief Electoral Officer, Sy Mamabolo, said 89.8% of the votes have been finalised and collated, while 99.3% of the results are awaiting capturing and auditing.

“Now you may ask the question, when are we likely to conclude everything? Our position is that we will not go to bed until the results are all declared for all municipalities.”

In real numbers, he said the 64 062 out of the expected 64 502 results have been captured in the system, while 62 539 have been audited and 58 956 have been scanned into an image and available to participants.

According to the CEO, the Northern Cape has climbed to the top of the leaderboard in terms of completion rate with 99.9% of the results being concluded, followed by 98.6% in Free State, 95.2% in the North West, 93.2% in the Eastern Cape, 91.6% in Mpumalanga, Gauteng 90.7% and 88.8% in the Western Cape.

“We previously indicated, the Commission remains committed to finalising the results expeditiously,” he stressed.

Meanwhile, he announced that the number of completed municipalities stands at 177 from the total of 257.

The IEC said it has received 80 complaints and objections and that the Presiding Officer deals with many of these.

Mamabolo told journalists that there are many lessons learnt from this year’s Local Government Elections. However, the leadership will have an opportunity to debrief the political parties, staff and observers.

“And from those then we will carry out lessons that will inform future legislative amendments, other policy adjustments,” he said, adding that the glitches they experienced sharpen training.

“We can’t go back. We’ve got to move forward and ensure that we improve the proficiency of use and other related operational matters, it’s been a very important national investment to fortify controls around the electoral process.”

Source: South African Government News Agency