Local elections: 87 results to be checked in KwaZulu-Natal
By the AFREEQUE newsroom, based on IOL
South Africa's electoral commission has captured all 14,245 results slips from KwaZulu-Natal municipalities and no longer has any ballot boxes being counted. There are 87 flagged results still to be checked, 79 of them in eThekwini and eight in Pietermaritzburg, before the final proclamation, according to provincial electoral officer Ntombifuthi Masinga, quoted by IOL.
South Africa's electoral commission (IEC) has captured all 14,245 results slips from every municipal council in KwaZulu-Natal and must now clear 87 "exceptions", results flagged by its system for checking before final validation, Ntombifuthi Masinga, the province's electoral officer, told IOL. Of these 87 exceptions, 79 are from the eThekwini (Durban) office and eight from the Pietermaritzburg office.
Twenty-five results are still awaiting an audit, and one results slip was sent back to the relevant office after the IEC's system detected a reconciliation anomaly during verification. "Where we are now, we are in a comfortable position: every result has been captured in the province. We are no longer counting anyone, no one is recounting," Ntombifuthi Masinga said.
Nationally, 446 so-called section 65 objections, considered to have a material impact on the results, were lodged; two were upheld and eight withdrawn by their authors. KwaZulu-Natal has two, both from Pietermaritzburg and still under examination, while the commission's legal service continues to review the files. According to the results recorded in the province, the IFP leads in 18 municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal.
