Councillor candidate submissions: IEC says technical ‘glitches’ could have been on the ANC’s side

The IEC said it will not accept late submissions of candidate lists. The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) says political parties who claim that they experienced technical glitches when submitting their list of councillor candidates could have been experiencing technical issues on their side. This comes after the ANC in a media statement on Monday claimed that it had failed to submit its full lists to the IEC because of glitches on the IEC’s system. “On the day of lodgement, the commission’s candidate-capture system experienced technical issues that affected a number of contesting parties. As a result, a small number of the movement’s entries are being finalised together with the commission. This is a technical and administrative matter, and it is being handled through the commission’s established processes,” said ANC spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu. Glitches and late submissions But during a media briefing on Wednesday, the IEC’s Chief Electoral Officer, Sy Mamabolo told reporters that the IEC’s system was functioning at full capacity on Friday. All political parties were expected to have their full lists submitted by 5pm on that day. “Our reports indicate no technical glitch, now the internet is an ecosystem and there are a number of variables that may the operation of an internet-based application, it may be volume, it may be bandwidth, it may even be an electric energy source so all those are possibilities within a broad ecosystem of the internet – but on our end we can report that we do not have reports of a non-functional system,” he said. Mamabolo said the online submissions had been open since 21 June, this is even before the election date was proclaimed. “Parties could have exercised capturing options from the 21st of June.” The IEC was questioned about a technical glitch which occurred in 2024 when the screens at the Results Operation Centre (ROC) in Midrand malfunctioned. The uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party had also used this occurrence to bring a case before the Electoral Court, arguing that the party was cheated out of a number of votes. 2024 screen blackout The IEC has maintained that the results of the 2024 elections were not affected by the issues that occurred on the scoreboards. It viewed the MK party’s court challenge as bringing the IEC into disrepute. “Judgment was reserved by the Electoral Court. Of course, we are eager for the court to speak on the matter because it is important that the air is cleared in relation to those allegations that were made,” he said. Improvements to IEC systems Mamabolo said the commission is prepared for the upcoming elections and has improved and strengthened certain operational aspects of the voting process and result collation. “We have concluded the enhancement of our results system. We are now finalising the framework for the transfer of results from our system into a data warehouse and eventually for projection in the various results operation centres including mobile resources. “Furthermore, the results system itself is currently undergoing external testing, it’s important that we have assurance about the technical robustness of the system and part of the testing involves the cybersecurity element of this system,” he said. Mamabolo said that once the external audit is concluded, political parties will be invited to see the audit of the results system ahead of the elections.