The South African Service Police (SAPS) have assured the nation that the 22 people arrested Wednesday on suspicion of attempting to vote more than once were in fact nabbed before they succeeded in their attempts to double-vote.
In a media briefing on Friday night, the police said some of the suspects had started the process of voting for the second time but the verification process stopped them in their tracks, with IEC staff at the voting stations managing to confirm that they had voted at other polling stations.
IEC said that as part of its auditing process, it will receive a list of over 1,000 voting stations from the Statistician General’s office that would form part of a technical assurance process to, among other things, look into whether there were people who had voted more than once.
This list would then be made available to the political parties.
“The electoral commission further welcomes the findings of a number of international and domestic observer missions that have endorsed our elections as free and fair and broadly reflective of the will of the people,” IEC vice-chairperson Janet Love said.
Twenty-seven political parties lodged a complaint with the commission and had called for a complete re-run of the elections as they believed that people who were suspected to have voted twice contaminated the fairness of the polls.
The parties also threatened court action if the commission failed to appoint an independent auditor and review of election results by 0900 GMT on Saturday.
Judge Dhaya Pillay, who received the complaints from the parties, said she could not comment on the matter as it was sub-judice but commended the parties for attempting to deal with this matter legally.
NM/jn/APA