With 7.55 million votes having been counted so far, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) on Thursday afternoon said it was happy with the rate of vote capture.
A record 25.39 million voters were registered to vote in the 2014 General Elections.
“I am very pleased with the capturing rate. Many of the presiding officers have been up for at least 36 hours. They have done well,” IEC Chief Executive Officer Mosotho Moepya said on Thursday.
Over half of all voting districts in the country – a total 22 263 voting districts – have been captured. The IEC, however, noted that these tended to be the smaller voting districts and municipalities in terms of voter numbers.
Addressing media at the National Results Operations Centre in Pretoria at midday on Thursday, IEC chairperson Pansy Tlakula said just over 72.61% of voter turnout of those voting districts which have been counted, captured and audited has been recorded.
“We are hoping this will grow further as the voting districts from large, urban and metro areas are captured,” she said.
As at 11:30am, 63% of voting districts in the Eastern Cape had been counted, while that of the Free State was at 41%, that of Gauteng at 18% and KwaZulu-Natal at 44%. In Limpopo, counting was at 38% while that of Mpumalanga was at 72%. The North West was at 46%, Northern Cape at 89% and that of voting districts in the Western Cape was at 79%.
Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal had among the lowest percentages of captured and audited votes so far.
Of the votes captured, approximately one in 10 voters had voted outside of their voting districts where they are registered.
Tlakula said this supported Wednesday’s indications where some stations had run short of ballot papers and VEC 4 forms that had to be replenished.
In Cape Town, the final voting stations in metro areas assisted the last voters at around 11:30pm while those in Durban were assisted after midnight and those in Joubert Park in Johannesburg were assisted in the early hours of this morning.
The commission is capturing at an average of approximately 830 voting districts per hour.
Overseas votes: Moepya said the counting of oversees votes started on Wednesday night.
“However, there are a number of missions whose votes were not received by 9pm last night. In those instances the commission considered the matter and the commission last night determined that those missions whose ballots had not been received by 9pm on Wednesday will be received and counted for, as long as they are here by close of business tomorrow. That is after 5pm,” he said.
Voting abroad took place on 29 April.
Spoilt votes: Of the votes captured and audited thus far, at least 1.44% of ballots were recorded as spoilt while special votes have comprised about 2% of the ballots. – SAnews.gov.za
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