IEC warning: These rising threats could endanger future elections in South Africa

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has raised concerns about the growing threat of misinformation and disinformation, warning that it could undermine the integrity of future elections.

On Tuesday, officials from the IEC presented their report to parliament’s home affairs portfolio committee, reflecting on the 2024 general elections.

The IEC’s voters’ roll recorded 27.78 million registered voters, but only around 16 million citizens turned out to vote in the national and provincial elections held on 29 May.

The 2024 elections were also notable for the inclusion of independent candidates for the first time. These candidates competed alongside 70 political parties.

The elections were not without complications, including false information, technical glitches, long queues, and subsequent court challenges.

IEC report on 2024 elections

During Tuesday’s meeting, IEC Chief Electoral Officer Sy Mamabolo reported to MPs that last year’s elections saw a slight 1.1% decrease in the number of spoilt votes compared to the 2019 elections.

“We ran efficient logistics because nearly 30 million ballots of each of the ballot types were produced and distributed within a one-month period,” Mamabolo said.

He noted that enhanced accessibility measures had been implemented for people with disabilities, many of whom were among the 1.4 million citizens who utilised special voting.

The IEC official also confirmed that no incidents of double voting were recorded during the 2024 election.

However, Mamabolo conceded that there were still areas requiring improvement, emphasising that there is no such thing as a “perfect election”.

“There will always be challenges because you are dealing with a programme of a massive scale,” he told the committee.

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Mamabolo explained that, although voter‑management devices and the real‑time leader board at the IEC results centre encountered problems, there was no “external penetration” of the commission’s ICT systems.

He emphasised that the two-hour interruption of the results board did not compromise the core election data, which remained fully secure.

Among the other areas identified for improvement were better communication with voters regarding their designated voting stations, as well as enhancing the quality and training of election staff.

The IEC also aims to educate young people in order to encourage higher voter turnout among the youth.

Mamabolo added that the IEC plans to intensify youth‑focused education campaigns to encourage greater turnout among young South Africans.

“It’s a persistent challenge and requires even more effort and resources to try to turn it around.”

Fighting misinformation and disinformation

A major concern highlighted was the rise in misinformation and disinformation leading up to the elections.

“In the last month towards the election, there was an escalation of disinformation and what we had prepared was willfully enough to deal with what one could refer to as the deluge of misinformation and disinformation and that presented a great challenge for the election,” Mamabolo said.

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He stressed the importance of improving the IEC’s capacity to respond to digital threats in future elections.

“We’ve got to think of technologies as well as human capacity to better deal with the space because anything short of an ability to deal with disinformation means we are placing an election at risk.”

Mamabolo warned that social media was a difficult area to monitor.

“There are new types of social media technologies that have been launched almost on a daily basis, but still to preserve the integrity of the election, we’ve got to manage this area a lot more better than perhaps we were able to do on this occasion.”

Voting station logistics and security measures

Mamabolo later indicated that 95% of voting stations during last year’s elections were permanent structures, mostly schools.

“This is good because it costs more to establish a temporary voting station than it [does] to get a temporary site.”

According to Mamabolo, the commission aims to further reduce the number of voting stations by 936 in the next general elections.

On election security, Mamabolo explained that priority committees under the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure (NATJoints) had primary responsibility for safeguarding election materials, among other things, while the South African Police Service (Saps) was tasked with securing voting stations.

“In terms of the inside of a station, the presiding officer maintains operational authority inside the boundaries of the voting station and outside of the voting station, it is not the purview of the presiding officer.

“So if people are drinking alcohol outside of the boundaries of the voting station, that is not within the purview of the presiding officer, but is the purview of the South African Police Service to deal with disruptions.”

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He said while there were isolated incidents, they were swiftly resolved without disrupting the voting process.

However, Mamabolo raised concerns about the behaviour of certain political parties, stating that they were involved in security breaches at some election facilities.

“We’ve had very unfortunate incidents that were noteworthy, where some parties went to our local storage sites, even attempted to break in at the provincial warehouse.

“I think we have to do more, perhaps, to dissuade political parties from actions such as those, because if anyone is disaffected by the manner in which the election process has been run, they can vindicate their rights in terms of the electoral justice framework that is part of our legislation.”

Despite these issues, the protection of personnel, election materials, and processes was effectively maintained throughout the elections.