The Electoral Commission stated today that it is aware of an incident which occurred last night in Dobsonville, Soweto, in which boxes containing ballot papers for next week’s election were stolen from a delivery vehicle.
“The Electoral Commission has established that the boxes contained ballot papers for Ward 29 and Ward 31 in Johannesburg. It is unlikely that the perpetrator/s were aware the boxes contained ballot papers as the vehicles and boxes are unmarked,” the IEC said in a statement issued on Facebook as well as its website.
“However, as part of our security measures, each ballot book has a unique serial number allowing the Electoral Commission to identify exactly which ballots are affected and to quarantine these immediately,” the statement read.
Given the known identity of these ballots as well as the security features built into the ballot papers themselves, the Electoral Commission is confident that the loss of these ballot papers can have no impact on the integrity of the elections.
The numbers of the missing booklets for Ward 29 are 127 – 146 and for Ward 31 are 76 – 113.
Each book has 100 ballot papers.
“The Electoral Commission and the South African Police Service are working closely in the investigation of this incident. The SAPS has already recovered two booklets and found an indeterminate number of others burnt.
“The recovered ballots will remain quarantined and contingency measures are in place to replace these ballots at the voting stations affected”.
The Electoral Commission has called on anyone with knowledge of the theft or any attempt to use these ballots to report this to the SAPS immediately.
