IEC powering through load shedding to finalise results from local elections

After committing to complete 90% of results by the end of Tuesday, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) on Wednesday morning said it remained committed to “expeditiously” finalising the results from Monday’s local government elections.

The IEC said 90% of results were already in the system at the level of capturing, and they were awaiting scanning and auditing.

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This means of the 64,502 results expected to be declared, 58,059 were captured into its results system.

“Of the 58,059 results captured, 44,707 have been scanned into an image and thus available,” the IEC said in a statement.

Vote counting done in 111 municipalities

By 8am on Wednesday, the number of completed municipalities stood at 111 from a total of 257.

The completion rate in the Northern Cape stood at 89% and 82% in the Eastern Cape. The Western Cape, Mpumalanga and the Free State were at 78%.

The completion rate in the rest of the provinces ranged between 55% and 69%.

“The commission remains committed to finalising results expeditiously while taking care to ensure that all necessary verifications are enforced,” the IEC said.

Load shedding affected vote counting

The IEC said rolling power cuts had affected the speed of vote counting, after Eskom implemented stage 2 load shedding from 4pm on Tuesday until 5am on Wednesday.

The IEC’s chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo on Tuesday said they were concerned about load shedding and were meeting with Eskom to discuss the impact of power cuts on the counting process.

“We have been in discussions with Eskom officials and in those discussions, what we sought to achieve was an insulation of certain sites where our operations continue,” Mamabolo said.

At the same time, Eskom warned that load shedding might be extended for the rest of the week due to a shortage of generation capacity caused by breakdowns at its power plants.

The power utility said it was utilising emergency generation reserves extensively to supplement its power supply.

“Eskom would like to remind customers and the public that load shedding is implemented as a last resort to maintain the stability of the power system,” Eskom said in a statement.

Compiled by Thapelo Lekabe

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