South Africa’s Statistician-General Risenga Maluleke has revealed that the risks of double voting during the country’s 2019 national and provincial elections held last week were “negligible,” APA learnt on Friday.
The findings are contained in the final report that was based on a sample of voting stations.
According to the Independent Electoral Commission (IE) on Friday, the report was intended to act as an 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 results data from 1,020 voting stations,” the IEC said.
The selected voting stations provide a statistically reliable sample of voting around the country.
The sample size was selected to provide a very high degree of reliability, with a 3% margin of error, the IEC said.
The IEC thanked Maluleke and his team at Statistics South Africa for the independent validation. The final report of the Statistician-General has been provided to all contesting political parties.
NM/jn/APA