Elections Live Blog (12/05)

IEC CEO Sy Mamabolo briefing media on the counting progress of votes, Results Operations Centre, Pretoria. South Africa. 09/05/2019.

Welcome to the third day of The Daily Vox’s elections live blog. We’re bringing you live updates as votes are counted. We’re still based at the Results Operation Centre in Pretoria.

18:11 The media chose to highlight negative stories, but 18 million voters were helped “honestly, quickly and easily,” the IEC chief commissioner Sy Mamabolo says.

18:00 LIVE: The official announcement of the results.

17:55 This election has been defined by absenteeism. Fewer people showed up in total than in 2014. Both the ANC and DA shrunk. And as with lower turnout elections go, this means that more of the small parties will be represented in the seventh parliament.

More of this in the newsletter…

THE FINAL VOTE TALLY

11:55 With more than 99% of the vote counted, it looks like the ANC will manage to hang on to Gauteng by the skin of their teeth.

11:50 A story to keep an eye on is the threat by micro parties to interdict the announcement of the final results, pending an independent audit of the results. (The statistician general is supposed to reveal the results of a sample audit at some point today.)

11:45 Catch up on Friday’s action at the results centre:

We are waiting for two events today, the announcement of the sample audit that was made after allegations of voter fraud, and the announcement of the final results.

Featured image by Siyabulela Duda (GCIS)