Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) Chief Electoral Officer Sy Mamabolo has described the National Results Operation Centre (ROC) as the beating heart of the 2024 National and Provincial elections.
The Electoral Commission has formally launched the ROC at the Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand, Johannesburg, on Wednesday.
Mamabolo has described the ROC as a theatre of electoral transparency.
“This ROC is the foundation on which transparency rests. All role-players will have appropriate access to system-based reports these reports will provide a national state of play vis a vis the unfolding electoral process a matter of substantial import is that the results of each voting station once audited may be instantaneously availed to political parties and the media through an application programming interface.”
2024 Elections | IEC launches National Results Operations Centre in Midrand
‘Extraordinary measures’
Meanwhile, IEC Chairperson Mosotho Moepya says the Commission has taken extraordinary measures to ensure that there is no rigging in next Wednesday’s elections.
Moepya says these measures relate to the capture and verification of results at each voting station, independent audits and real-time accessibility of data to stakeholders.
He says that due to the highly contested nature of these elections, it has also been necessary to test, through various simulations, the competency of electoral staff using historical data.
Moepya says that the Commission has also employed a rapid response system to address any discrepancies in the election results swiftly and decisively.
“We have asked them to go and sit in their work stations and this data was pumped to them in the system to simulate on election day we do so for two purposes we have to test their ability and skill to manage on election day but we also have to do so to test the capacity of our systems to handle that data in a real-life environment.”
