‘It’s not possible to rig an election in South Africa’ — IEC chair

In an address to the Cape Town Press Club on 4 April, Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) chairperson Glen Mashinini told members of the media that “it’s not possible to rig an election in South Africa”.

Mashinini, who helped establish the IEC and served as deputy chief electoral officer from 1998-2000, will oversee his first national election on 8 May.

During his appointment, Mashinini came under fire from opposition parties, who claimed that his role as special projects adviser to former President Jacob Zuma made him ineligible for the position. Despite this obstacle, Mashinini was elected chairperson of the IEC in October 2015.

In a rare conversation with the press, Mashinini on Thursday spoke about the fear of cyber attacks on the electoral process, claiming that election results cannot be easily manipulated.

“There’s no guarantee that we can’t get attacked, but our architecture is such that you can’t collapse the results of the elections,” he said.

Mashinini emphasised that most of the South African election process is conducted manually, thus limiting the impact outside forces can have on voter results.

Although automated systems can be used to facilitate or speed up the counting process, in many instances ballots are counted by hand at voting stations by Independent Electoral Commission officials. Throughout the process, two representatives from each political party preside over the voting and vote-counting processes. Once votes have been counted, representatives sign an official results slip authenticating the results.

According to Mashinini, these checks and balances are integral to preventing elections from being rigged and election results from being manipulated. Still, the commission has “improved their security systems and enhanced their firewalls” in an attempt to prevent outside interference or attack.

Despite a predominantly manual voting process, Mashinini said the IEC is still concerned over the logistical impact of load shedding. In particular, the commission is looking at alternative power sources to ensure that the counting of votes, which occurs after voting stations close at 9pm, is not affected by any power outages.

“We have been in discussions with government through the various security structures and the Elections Priority Committee to see what can be done to avoid power interruptions on election day. We are also in direct discussion with Eskom to the extent that they can assist by avoiding maintenance during election week.”

The IEC has also worked in association with Media Monitoring Africa to combat the spread of political disinformation. On Tuesday 2 April the two groups launched the Real411, an online platform that allows South Africans to report disinformation that might impact the integrity of the election process. DM