No ballots taken in attempted IEC storage facility raid

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has confirmed that an unknown mob failed to break into its warehouse on Tuesday.

Election material was being transported from a regional storage facility back to the central office in Booysens, where a group attempted to intercept the material.

The IEC confirmed that nothing was taken from the warehouse and that police were still investigating.

Group followed truck with IEC material

“During the rollback of material from a local storage site in the inner city in the City of Johannesburg, a group of persons interfered with the handling of materials and subsequently followed the truck used to transport the material back to the provincial warehouse,” confirmed the IEC.

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The IEC extended its gratitude to the police for responding promptly to the incident.

National police spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe confirmed the investigation, telling SABC News: “We are studying all the evidence at our disposal, and investigators are continuing to find out what the motive is and who these people really are.  We are working closely with the IEC officials to get to the bottom of this matter.”

IEC results board confusion

The IEC was forced to clarify the figures on their results board after the numbers saw a dramatic jump.

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The electoral custodians stated that the increases in vote numbers and subsequent percentage adjustments were due to the combining of the national and regional ballots.

“The Electoral Act prescribes that for the calculation of compensatory seats, both national compensatory ballots (N) and regional ballots (R) are taken into account. Hence the demotion of N and R on the results board,” explained IEC spokesperson Kate Bapela.

When going to the polls on 29 May, two of the three ballots counted towards the seat allocation for the National Assembly.

Two hundred seats were determined by the national ballot, whereas the regional ballot determined the other 200 seats based on province-specific determinations.