Pretoria – Results for 70% the country’s voting districts are now in, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) announced on Thursday evening.
Briefing the media on the latest in the ballot counting process in the 2014 general election, IEC Chief Electoral Officer Mosotho Moepya said the commission was on track to finish counting votes in the fifth democratic national and provincial elections.
“We remain on track to record the highest total number of votes cast for an election in South Africa’s 20-year history of democracy,” he said from the national Results Operations Centre (ROC).
As at 6pm, just over 12.62 million votes had been captured on the results system. This is out of 25.39 million of registered voters.
Moepya said turnout in the voting districts captured so far remained steady at 72.85 %. There are 22 263 voting districts throughout the country.
“At this rate, it would seem as if we are on course to see over 18 million votes cast in this national election,” he said.
In the 2009 general election, 17.9 million votes were cast.
Ballot counting is complete in the Northern Cape, while other provinces, except Gauteng, are nearing completion, Moepya said.
Provincial breakdown of voting districts
As at 6pm, the percentages of voting districts, for which results are in, stood as follows:
Eastern Cape: 87%
Free State: 64%
Gauteng: 43%
KwaZulu-Natal: 79%
Limpopo: 79%
Mpumalanga: 99%
Northern Cape: 100%
Western Cape: 94%.
Of the votes captured and audited so far, 1.37% have been recorded as spoilt.
Moepya said the finalisation of the international voting district result will only be done tomorrow night.
“So far, we’ve captured 17 905 votes from 106 missions and we await the final votes from the 10 remaining missions.”
The trend of almost one in 10 voters voting outside of their voting district, which emerged earlier today, has remained constant. – SAnews.gov.za
