South Africans to Get Open Window Into Election Count

South Africans preparing to vote in the upcoming municipal elections will soon be able to follow the count through a system the Electoral Commission says is designed for openness, though its track record has not been without blemish.

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) will launch its national Results Operation Centre on Wednesday, using the occasion to explain how its election dashboard will function for the local government polls. The centre will once again operate from the Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand, Gauteng.

At the heart of the ROC’s work is the management of the count itself. It is the primary base from which results are audited, collated, verified and announced, a process that ultimately determines which parties govern municipalities and, by extension, how residents are served.

For the parties contesting the elections, the centre offers live updates on how their organisations are performing. Large screens typically project election progress, voter turnout, live statistics and verified results in real time, giving the public a window into the count as it unfolds.

Transparency is a stated aim of the operation. Parties are given space to track results as they come in and to raise official objections where they believe something is amiss, a mechanism intended to protect the integrity of the outcome on behalf of all voters.

Whether that transparency holds will be watched closely, given recent history. During the 2024 general elections, the elections dashboard suffered a technical glitch, and the leader board at the national results operations centre went blank for roughly two hours. The outage angered sections of the public, among them the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party, which believed the incident had allowed votes to be rigged.

That dispute has since moved through the courts. The Electoral Court recently dismissed the party’s application to challenge the results of that election, leaving the official outcome intact.

For voters, the launch of the centre is a reminder that the machinery behind election results is being readied. How well it performs when the municipal count begins will bear directly on public confidence in the outcome.