Weather, logistics and court rulings tested IEC election plans

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JEREMY MAGGS: South Africans have voted, but how smoothly did the electoral process actually run yesterday? There were reports of technical failures, delayed voting stations, inadequate equipment and also voter frustration.

All of this has raised questions about the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC) preparedness.

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As counting continues, attention is now turning to the integrity of the process, the speed of results, and whether the IEC can maintain public confidence in an increasingly contested political environment.

I’m in conversation now with Masego Sheburi, who is the deputy chief electoral officer at the IEC. Masego, let me start with the big picture then: was yesterday’s election an operational success, or were there more problems, perhaps, than you had anticipated?

MASEGO SHEBURI: On many metrics, we can say it was an operational success. However, our obligation is to offer a service to citizens.

So if there’s a citizen who was unhappy with our service, we should be concerned and try to make it better the next time we interact with them.

But on the whole, yesterday was a culmination of two years of hard work and planning, and we’re very happy with the effort that we placed at the disposal of citizens to exercise their rights in an environment relatively calm, characterised by professional service and functioning technology.

JEREMY MAGGS: Are you at this stage, Masego, able to tell me how many voting stations experienced any type of disruption? And as a result of that, how many voters might have been affected?

MASEGO SHEBURI: It will be difficult to quantify the number of voters who may be affected, because it could be the totality of everyone who’s registered in that voting district, including those who were not intent on participating.

The majority of problems that we encountered this time around were as a result of inclement weather, and not so much an inability to plan, except in the city of Cape Town, on the first day of special voting, where we had ballot paper distribution [delayed] late into the mid-morning, and the last station that we provided, we provided ballot papers at about three.

So in those areas there is a direct impact on the voters.

In instances of inclement weather, especially for the special vote, fortunately, we had the second day to recover and make alternative arrangements.

Thanks to the state, we also got assistance where we needed military choppers to ferry us across flooded rivers so that we could extend the right of franchise.

JEREMY MAGGS: As far as you’re concerned, are these isolated failures, or do they point to perhaps weakness within your planning, procurement and testing procedures?

MASEGO SHEBURI: The procurement procedures, I think those ones we are relatively good with. So even with the late distribution of ballots, it was not for want of planning.

Our original plan had a finishing date for ballot production and distribution as 21 October. But we all know that there was a court case that says include candidates who were not on the ballot.

In that circumstance, we had had to reprint 33 million ballots in a short space of a few days and have them ready for special voting days. That is what set us back on the logistics.

On the other areas, we could improve our planning with the other sister departments in the state that we depend on because we were forewarned about the weather conditions, but we firmed up arrangements for choppers very late in the day.

We had thought that 4×4 vehicles will traverse the terrain, and it proved beyond the capability of those cars or maybe the drivers of those vehicles.

JEREMY MAGGS: I’m glad you mentioned the weather. In many centres in South Africa, very, very hot temperatures recorded. Did that in any way impact voter turnout, do you think?

MASEGO SHEBURI: We are poised to reverse the trend of declining voter participation in local government elections.

Our estimates from data we gleaned from the voter management device is that 15.9 million South Africans presented at voting stations, and if, after confirmation of the count, that number is validated, we would have inverted the trend of declining voter participation in local government.

JEREMY MAGGS: As we have this conversation, the counting process is continuing. At this point, then, Masego, where are the biggest risks of either errors, disputes or delays, particularly in closely contested municipalities? And how are you dealing with those?

MASEGO SHEBURI: Our systems are designed to bring those errors to the fore. We may have a result slip. We’re asking that people treat it as provisional, because once we finalise the capture of results, once we finalise the scanning of results, those results become publicly available to us, to contestants as well as the media.

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Political parties will have an opportunity to compare the results that they signed off for at the station and the results that we have in our results system, and where there is a cause to raise an objection, which objection we must consider before the commission finalises the results.

So if you hear noises about results being changed or results are not the same, it is evidence of the system doing that which it has to do.

As we say, we believe we are little saints, but we have built systems for sinners.

JEREMY MAGGS: At this point, are you able to say whether political parties are becoming more assertive in challenging results? And do you have sufficient capacity to deal with multiple simultaneous objections?

MASEGO SHEBURI: We must build that capacity. That’s why we exist to do [that]. But indeed, parties have become sophisticated. They run sophisticated algorithms. They run sophisticated parallel results capturing.

We are thankful for that because those ones test the resilience of our system. They force us to improve with each unfolding election.

JEREMY MAGGS: How does the IEC verify, then, the accuracy of results coming in from individual voting stations? And what happens when those numbers don’t reconcile?

MASEGO SHEBURI: We count all the ballots at the voting stations, so no ballot leaves a voting station uncounted. We count in front of party agents. Once we have counted, we complete a result slip. Party agents can raise objections, and once you are done with those results, they can take an image of that result.

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We’ll also take an image of that results slip, and we scan it into a repository here so that each one of us can go and call up that results list to see if the results that are in the system are the results that we have captured.

We also employ, at significant cost, independent auditors whose job it is to audit each results slip, not a sample, each results slip, to indicate that the result that is in the system is indeed captured as it has left a voting station.

Parties through remote access, and those that are at the Results Operations Centre (Roc), have access to each result.

So we build the result per voting district, so we do not have a big hole of results. A result, we track it up to up to voting district level and that facilitates transparency.

JEREMY MAGGS: Masego Sheburi, thank you very much indeed. You are the deputy chief electoral officer at the Independent Electoral Commission.