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22 April 2009

On Monday we commenced with the conduct of special votes and in that process voters with special circumstances were given an opportunity to cast their ballots either at a place of confinement or at the voting station. This process has gone extremely well and the vast majority of successful applicants were in fact able to cast their ballots. The ballots that were collected over the two days of special votes were kept in safe storages in municipal offices. The special ballots will be counted with the rest of the ballots cast at the voting stations.

Yesterday we experienced high levels of voters seeking to use special votes. This is indicative of the high levels of interest in this election. While we are not certain of the final figures as these will be known when counting is completed, we roughly project an estimation of about 200 000 special ballots cast in the province.

The preceding days of special votes have laid a basis for today. Most of the logistical challenges have been resolved by the second day of special votes. This morning 2295 voting stations across the breath of the province were opened and all are now fully functional.

We are already experiencing high levels of turnout at all voting stations across the province. In fact as early as 05h30 there were queues of voters at some of our stations.

We are advising presiding officers to break the voters’ roll and run multiple streams at the voting stations in order to expedite the process of voting. The commission is hoping and expecting more than 80% voter turn out. In the interest on increased transparency at the voting stations level, we have introduced a requirement for party agents to observe at least three key components of the process:

* The voters' roll table: party agents are able to observe as voters are crossed of the voters roll.
* "Inking" table: party agents are now able to observe when the left thumb of each voter is applied with indelible ink.
* Ballot issue table: party agents are observing the issuing of ballots to voters.

At this stage we are informed that there is a great deal of good spirit and camaraderie between electoral officers and party agents. We wish to impress upon all stakeholders at the voting stations to ensure that we keep that spirit and protect the prevailing atmosphere in order to ensure that our voters vote in an atmosphere conducive to free and fair elections.

The Commission has by regulation established that political parties may establish temporary operational facilities which include tables, tents and gazebos outside the boundary of a voting station. These temporary operations facilities must however not impede the direct and free access of voters to the entrance of the voting stations. At this stage, we are informed that these facilities are placed in terms of the established regulation. Again we want to urge political representatives at voting stations to ensure that they do not use the facilities as the basis of harassing voters as the voting process develops.

Counting of votes will proceed immediately after the closing of the voting stations. The voting station converts into a counting station. The presiding officer will assume of the overall responsibility of the counting process as counting officer. In order to ameliorate the possible effects of fatigue, we are introducing a role of Deputy Counting Officer who will join the station later in the day and will assist the presiding officer with the management of the counting process. This we hope will expedite the counting process.

The results slips will be completed in duplicate and one copy will be left at the door of the voting station whilst the second copy will be taken to the office of the municipal electoral officer for processing. Again in the interest of greater transparency, we are will scanning the images of the results slips in the result system. These scanned images will be available to political parties at the national and provincial result centres.

After scanning the result will be captured on a blind double capture basis to increase accuracy in the capturing process. After successful capturing the results will be audited by independent professional from auditing firms. The result system will then perform a number of validations to see if there are not exceptions such as high voter turnout, low voter turnout, high spoilt votes etc. Exceptions will be investigated by the staff in the provincial results centre.

Given the need to capture and verify 4 590 results for the province our projection is that we will complete the whole results process by late afternoon on Friday, 24 April 2009. The Commission has seven days within which to declare the results of the election. They however need to ensure that they finalise all objections which are material to the result. Such objections must be lodged with the Commission by 17h00 of the second day following the conduct of election.

In conclusion, we are pleased with the manner in which the process the voting process commenced this morning. We are confident that this process will continue in the manner it has started and the calm that prevails will characterise the totality of this election. Again we assure the voting public of Gauteng that we will serve them with honour and dignity.

Enquiries:
Solly Kganyago
Media Liaison Officer
Cell: 082 568 6122

Issued by: Independent Electoral Commission
22 April 2009