IEC reiterates nothing underhanded with election results dashboard update

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The IEC has reiterated that the results for the national and provincial elections as well as the seats assigned to political parties on the 2nd of June have not changed. This, as it sought to explain the update it made on the dashboard of its online results platform.

The update resulted in accusations that it had manipulated the results and inflated the numbers in favour of some parties including the ANC.

IEC Deputy Chief Electoral Officer Masego Shiburi says the manner in which the results are presented have merely been simplified, and  numerical figures as well as the percentage votes have not changed.

“The National Assembly is a two-tier system that is made up of elections at a regional election as well as one national level and the seats are split 200 in the region and 200 at the national assembly elections. All that we have done is to combine those results and give parties that were given to it on the seats that were aligned to it on the 2nd of June as well as the share of the vote percentage as was determined on the 2nd of June in order to simplify the information that was given to stakeholders and the public,” says Shiburi.

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Shiburi has admitted that the IEC could have done more to educate contestants and the public on the commission’s election results system. This after confusion prevailed over an update of the online dashboard in order to “simplify” the presentation of the provincial and national election results.

“We’d thought that the manner in which we presented it was easy enough, but it turned out in hindsight that some of the steps were obscure to people hence the change and that change was effected already on the 7th of June and not yesterday as reported,” says Shiburi.

“We maintain liaison with political parties and independent candidates so those who wanted information could have written an email to the commission and we would have clarified but we accept that this was a new introduction implemented for the first time and it will take a series of elections for it to take root,” he adds.