By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) confirmed that it lost a ballot box from Umhlathuze Ward 14, in the Richards Bay area, Kwazulu/Natal.
National General Manager of Operations at the IEC Granville Abrahams says the box went missing after being transported from the voting station Matamzana Dube School in VD 43412767, KZN282.
Abrahams said the box was being transported in an open vehicle. By the time those who were transporting the box got to their destination, they discovered that it was gone.
“The results are in for that specific [ballot box]; we are quite eager to get back that ballot box so that we can put it in storage. Those votes in the ballot box were counted and recorded in the result centre,” Abrahams said.
He said the IEC does not believe that the box went missing because of negligence, but if that was the case, the commission would investigate further.
“We [did] not plan to lose a single ballot box. Looking at it in context, we have just under 23 000 voting districts. In this election, we would probably have three or more ballot boxes [per voting station], so it is more than 100 000 boxes [nationally, that have not been lost],” Abrahams added.
“I am not trying to make excuses, I am talking about a single ballot box. I don’t think that under the circumstances, we would have considered that as an error given that elections are not perfect, but we plan and we strive towards that,” he said.
Abrahams said counting would continue throughout the night and that some municipalities, particularly smaller ones, had completed counting and had packed up.
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.
“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.
“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.
Meanwhile political parties in Limpopo have collectively called on the IEC to swiftly resolve a few disputes before the election results can be accepted as free and fair.
Some parties addressed the media at the Results Operation Centre in Polokwane on Thursday, following a Party Liaison Committee (PLC) meeting with the provincial IEC.
The DA’s Desiree van der Walt said: “We still have three voting districts under dispute. We also raised a dispute regarding an incident at Mitchell House School in Polokwane, where there were extra ballots than the number of papers issued.
“The IEC is investigating that. They have sent their officials to verify our claims. We are awaiting the results. We are waiting for another complaint in Lephalale. We hope to resolve the matters before we sign off on the elections, that they were free and fair.”