Vote capturing continuing smoothly in the Western Cape, says IEC

Vote capturing was running smoothly in the Western Cape, with 35% of the voting districts completed by 3pm on Thursday.

The Electoral Commission’s provincial head, Michael Hendrickse, said only 10 of the province’s 1,572 voting districts were still finalising their counts.

He was addressing journalists at the provincial results centre in Cape Town.

Results started coming in early on Thursday morning from voting districts in Oudtshoorn, Cape Agulhas on the west coast and Beaufort West, which are generally among the first ones to come in.

They are among “very small” voting districts in the province.

Hendrickse confirmed that the last voting station to close on election day was CBC St John's Parklands School in Parklands where voting stopped at 1.52am on Thursday.

“It was to ensure that everybody who was in the queue at the time could vote,” said Hendrickse.

It is one of the biggest voting stations in the city with more than 7,400 voters and 27 ballot boxes. It was among the stations that were still counting on Thursday afternoon, he said.

Among the minor glitches experienced by the commission was a power failure in the Breede Valley municipality, which includes the town of Worcester, about 2am on Thursday.

The power outage was attributed to inclement weather. The whole area lost electricity, affecting counting at 57 voting stations in the area.

Hendrickse said Eskom restored power and counting resumed even before the temporary lighting provided by the IEC reached the affected stations. Being smaller voting districts, they proceeded to finalise the count and all the voting stations in the area were finalised.

Hendrickse couldn’t say about what time the final results will be known in the province but he was hoping to get over the middle mark before the end of the day in terms of captured and verified results.

Meanwhile, the DA looked set to retain power in the province with 51.61% of the support after the 35% of the voting districts had been declared.

While it was too early to get a definitive picture, the ANC, which has been the official opposition in the province since 2009, looked like it was slipping below the 28% it got in May 2019.