The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) launched its national Results Operation Centre (ROC) on Wednesday, promising that its election dashboard is ready and that lessons from the 2024 glitch that left the leaderboard blank for two hours have been fixed ahead of the Local Government Elections on November 4.
The centre will once again operate from the Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand, which will serve as the primary management base for auditing, collating, verifying and announcing election results.
The launch comes as the IEC races to finalise preparations for what will be one of the most contested municipal elections, with 508 registered political parties set to contest and millions of ballots reprinted in the final week.
The national ROC is the nerve centre of South Africa’s elections. It is where political parties, observers, media and the public track live results.
Huge screens display voter turnout, provincial breakdowns, and verified results in real time. Parties are also given dedicated space to monitor their performance and raise official objections, a mechanism aimed at ensuring transparency.
The 2024 general election dashboard suffered a technical failure on results day, causing the leaderboard at the ROC to go blank for almost two hours.
The incident triggered outrage, with the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party claiming it created room for vote rigging. The Electoral Court has since dismissed the MK Party’s application to challenge those results.
Wednesday’s launch demonstrated how the new dashboard will work, including safeguards against a repeat of the 2024 incident.
“We have audited our systems and strengthened redundancy,” an IEC official said ahead of the launch.
The Commission gave a live demonstration of the results system, showing how results will flow from voting stations to district, provincial and national levels before being verified and published.
Preparations have been complicated by a last-minute Constitutional Court ruling in favour of the ANC. The court ordered the IEC to re-accommodate candidates whose lists were not submitted on time, forcing the reprinting of millions of ballots to include an additional 181 ANC candidates and candidates from 32 other parties.
Chief Electoral Officer Sy Mamabolo has said the Commission is targeting Friday to complete the reprint, in time for special voting which begins on Monday.
“We are closely monitoring the reprinting process,” Mamabolo said. He acknowledged operational challenges, including electricity disruptions caused by vandalism and power supply problems that affected some printing operations, but said the Commission is working to resolve them.
“While we are targeting Friday, some printing could extend beyond the deadline due to unforeseen circumstances. However, we do not currently anticipate that this will prevent us from preparing for the elections,” he said.
Beyond printing, the IEC is managing the logistics of distributing ballot papers and securing materials for 188,000 election officials who will staff voting stations across the country.
Mamabolo has urged political parties not to interfere with local storage facilities or the transportation of election materials.
“We have stressed the importance of ensuring that ballots and other election supplies are handled with care and kept secure during transportation,” he said.
The Commission has also warned parties against attacking the media and undermining confidence in the electoral process.
The launch of the ROC on Wednesday marked the formal start of results operations.
The centre will be open to party agents, observers and journalists throughout counting and verification.