Editorial: IEC can do much better

The Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) is one of the institutions that we pride ourselves on as South Africans because of its undiluted independence, impartiality and history of running clean, free and fair elections.

When political parties spend money to register to contest elections, they do so with an expectation that, whatever the problems they will encounter attracting the electorate to vote for them, the IEC is not one of those problems.

So, it was disturbing when news emerged this week of how the IEC systems had struggled to adjust to technology – including how to handle the new smart IDs, which cannot be stamped by electoral officers.

Crooked voters, who quickly picked up the system’s vulnerability, allegedly used the opportunity to vote at more than one station on Wednesday.

Congress of the People MP Deidre Carter said she became aware that the indelible ink could be removed, allowing a person to vote at more than one station.

She went to five stations and was given printed slips each time from scanners, allowing her to vote because the scanners were not linked to any central database.

When she was about to fill in the form required for those voting away from their registered station, she, of her own volition, alerted the presiding officers to what she was doing.

Problems identified for this round of voting included the easy removal of ink from thumbs, scanners which were broken and the inability to come up with an alternative to new smart card IDs, on which stickers cannot be attached.

The IEC initially admitted to the problems on Thursday – then refused to acknowledge them a day later. It later started a votes audit and an examination of the ink used so as to determine how widespread the problem was.

The IEC has never been in this situation before where its efficiency has been called into question. Its integrity with regard to the outcome of elections has always been trusted. But this week’s lapses were embarrassing.

They even allowed parties which fared poorly and were rejected by voters to moan that they lost because of IEC incompetence and bias.

There is a new cohort of commissioners and administrators at the IEC. Clearly, it is not yet up to the task. Immediately after these elections, the IEC needs to do a proper postmortem, learn from these mistakes and ensure that its hitherto impeccable reputation is restored.

Failure to take remedial steps could plunge the country into chaos in future polls.