Results for the 2026 Local Government Elections are being awaited with bated breath.

According to Sedibeng Ster, the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has warned community members and party officials to wait for its official declaration before circulating unofficial results.

Following a successful voting process, the IEC announced that it was satisfied voters were afforded the opportunity to cast their ballots.

The counting, tallying and verification process continued throughout the night in the presence of political party agents, independent candidate agents and accredited observers, reinforcing the transparency, integrity and accountability of the electoral process.

Over three days, South Africans have exercised their right to choose their representatives at the ballot box.

The results-capturing process is an important phase of election results management and transmission, the IEC announced, underscoring that counting occurs at voting stations so every ballot paper is accounted for and duly recorded as a watermark of free and fair elections.

The commission added that after counting, results slips are captured in duplicate in front of party agents, independent agents and observers. The agents can record and make photographic images of the results slips. Similarly, the IEC makes an image of the results to facilitate retrieval by contestants where this may be required.

From the voting station, results slips are transported in tamper-evident envelopes to the local capturing site of the Electoral Commission. Capturing involves stringent quality assurance measures, including double-blind capturing of the result slips, scanning of the results slips into the results system and auditing by independent auditors on the total population of results. This means that the audit is not sampled, but the entire results are subjected to this important assurance measure.

Rigorous verification measures

The IEC further said that another important layer to the process is the use of an automated result system process to check possible anomalies such as excessive voter turnout, or variance in votes for a party in the same voting station.

The Electoral Commission provided the following update as at 09:00 yesterday (November 5):

• There were 66 073 results slips expected from the local municipality, metros and district council votes across the 23 696 voting stations countrywide.- About 23 444 (35.5%) of the expected results slips had been scanned through to the results system, and 22 983 (34.8%) had been captured, with 16 791 (25.4%) independently audited. Results from 18 local municipalities (7%) had been concluded at 09:00 yesterday, compared with seven municipalities completed at the same stage in 2021.

Call for calm

The commission appealed to political parties, independent candidates and their supporters to exercise patience and allow the counting and results-capturing processes to unfold, urging all candidates and political role-players to refrain from spreading unverified information or disinformation that could create tensions or incite violence.

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