KZN voter turnout tops national average at 48.7% - TimesLIVE
KwaZulu-Natal’s preliminary voter turnout stood at 48.7%, above the national figure of 45.8% on Thursday morning.
Provincial electoral officer Ntombifuthi Masinga said the figures remained provisional, with only 18% of the province’s results captured and 12% audited.
The turnout figures put KwaZulu-Natal 2.9 percentage points ahead of the national average, but Masinga said that outstanding results could change the picture.
“As the commission in KwaZulu-Natal, we are quite pleased with what appears to be a higher than national average voter turnout in our province.
“We would like to thank the voters in KwaZulu-Natal who came out in their numbers. We would have hoped that we would exceed the 50% mark, but we are waiting. We are not done yet. Not all the results have been captured.”
The province has 5,028 voting stations.
Masinga said the commission was now focusing on capturing and auditing results.
“Currently we are sitting at 18% of the results captured and 12% of results audited.”
She said an independent firm of auditors had to check that results entered into the IEC’s system matched those from voting stations before they could appear on the public dashboard.
Political parties could therefore be further ahead in collating results, she said. Their agents were encouraged to photograph result slips at voting stations and send them to their parties’ results centres. The parties could then compare their records with the commission’s final results.
Political parties and independent candidates have until 5pm on Friday to lodge section 65 objections concerning aspects of the process they believed might have compromised the integrity of results at a voting station, Masinga said.
A panel of lawyers is assisting the commission with investigations into objections. Masinga said these would have to be dealt with before results were announced.
“The commission will then deliberate on those objections.”
She said the commission planned to announce results on Sunday, after resolving the objections lodged with it.
