/ 22 April 2009

How your vote gets counted

How does your vote get from your polling station to the massive electronic scoreboards at the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC) results centre in Pretoria?

Through a long and complex, but safe process, according to IEC staff.

It started with thousands of SMSes sent by presiding officers to the results centre on Wednesday morning to confirm that polling stations were open and running.

Ninety-nine percent of polling stations opened on time and, according to an IEC spokesperson, the others were sorted out early in the day.

By 9pm on Wednesday presiding officers were supposed to send another SMS to Pretoria confirming that voting has ended and that the counting process had begun.

If you were in the queue before 9pm, you will be allowed to cast your vote.

After polling stations have closed, the physical counting of ballots starts. IEC officials and party representatives are present during counting and result slips for both the national and provincial ballots are completed.

These slips and the sealed ballot boxes are then taken to the nearest municipal electoral office where the slips are scanned and results processed electronically on to the IEC’s computer system.

This is done through a system called “double blind capturing”, where the capturers have to type in all results twice to prevent mistakes and fraud.

After the results are electronically processed, independent auditors at all municipal electoral offices go through a process of verification where physical slips are compared to the electronically captured numbers for veracity.

Each independent auditor has an unique identification number, which is used to send through audited figures to Pretoria.

Another round of verification happens at the national results centre where IEC official look out for “funnies” — explained by one IEC spokesperson as “strange results” where figures don’t add up or make sense.

Only then are results published on the IEC’s scoreboards in Pretoria.

The IEC also has a sophisticated complaints system in place where political parties can lodge their grievances online and keep track of investigations.

This is separate from the official objections system, manned by about 10 senior IEC staff in an office called the “Nerve Centre/Legal Department/Party Liason”.