During their midday press briefing for Election Day, the Electoral Commission said they were “satisfied with the voting process”. However, there were many glitches and issues facing voters. Several voting stations didn’t open on time due to protests. A number of people also said the voting stations were offline when they went to vote.
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The Daily Vox team spoke to Nabielah Jacobs, a presiding officer at Voorspoed Primary voting station in Hanover Park about this issue.
This thing was working the whole morning. But around twenty minutes ago, it stopped working and crashed on us. It just switched off. We think the battery is flat and we’re busy charging. However, this thing does not even want to go on. It’s been off for about fifteen minutes.
What we’re doing now is that we’re writing down the people’s names, surnames and ID numbers manually. We might be able to cope (if the system stays offline until voting ends). If it goes on within two to three hours, it depends on how many voters we need to record on this thing. My staff is capable and I think we will be able to manage. If not, we will inform the office and admin beforehand.
We will send a message to them if we can’t manage. We tried to explain to the voters what is actually happening here and what we are doing. We told them sorry for any inconvenience. The voters do understand.
Jacobs was not aware that this was an issue affecting other voting stations. The system is reportedly back online. The system being spoken about is the one that is used to check the voter registration information. One voter said he was told the issue was related to network problems.
