'Negligible risks' from double-voting in national election: IEC

The Electoral Commission (IEC) said on Thursday that there were "negligible risks" from double-voting in last week's general election.

The commission made the claim after receiving the final report of Statistician-General Risenga Maluleke into the practice. The report was from a sample of voting stations in the 2019 national and provincial elections.

"The report was intended, in addition to the set of internal validations already applied by the commission in determining the freeness and fairness of the election based on the likelihood of multiple voting. This validation exercise was conducted independently by Statistics South Africa based on voting station result data from 1,020 voting stations," the IEC said in a statement.

It said the selected voting stations provided "a statistically reliable sample of voting around the country". The analysis compared the number of Section 24A votes cast in a ward versus the number cast in a voting district. Section 24A forms have to be filled in if the voter casts their ballots at a voting station where they are not registered.

"If Section 24A votes in a voting district were significantly higher than instances of Section 24A votes in the ward this would be flagged as an indicator of potential deviation from the voting process.

"The commission is satisfied that the use of Section 24A voting was consistent with previous elections and showed a significant deviation from the pattern in only a tiny number of voting stations in the sample (13 out of 1,020, or 1.27 percent). Even in these isolated instances, the commission is satisfied that the trend compares favourably with previous voting patterns in voting stations with low registration levels," the statement read.

Maluleke's final report has been provided to all contesting political parties.