Johannesburg – The Independent Electoral Commission has announced that 90% of counting of votes will be done by tonight.
IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo said they were on course to declare the elections on Thursday.
Mamabolo was speaking during the IEC’s press conference today, during which noted that the balance of 10 per cent would take another 24 hours to complete.
“This is in line with commission’s expectation of results to complete the counting of the results at the adhered time,” said Mamabolo.
“We would like to further confirm that the voting stations have all closed, and that electoral commission reports that as at 10:30 this morning 27% of 64 504 results have been finalized thus far,” he added.
Mamabolo indicated that 74% votes were counted in the Northern Cape, which has a low population while in the Western Cape 46% of votes had been counted. The Free State province was at 26%, while vote counting at all other provinces was between 15% and 37%.
An independent audit firm had been procured to auditing the results.
“The result capturing involves a number of processes including the verification of the result slips, the capturing, scanning and the auditing of the results,” Mamabolo said.
Mamabolo applauded the voting management device (VMD) saying had enabled the IEC to run the elections promptly.
“Through the use of the technology, the Commission was able for the first time to register voters and simultaneously capture their addresses during the registration period,” he said.
“These devices have ensured that we continue to meet the constitutional courts injunction that voters only vote in the wards in which they are registered.”
As of lunchtime, 31% of votes were calculated nationally, across the 257 municipalities.
The ANC was leading the race with 46,65% of the votes (2,8 million ), followed by the DA with 24% (1,4 million) while the EFF is in the third position with 9,4% of the votes.
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