Cape Town - The IEC in the Western Cape has given the assurance that almost all polling delays in the province have been resolved.
IEC provincial Electoral officer Courtney Sampson told a media briefing at the IEC operations Centre in Bellville South that delays at voting stations on Wednesday morning were caused by a combination of human error and technical glitches.
Conceding that the first hour of elections is usually marked by quite a bit of hiccups and hitches, “some of it due to human error and some of them due to technical hitches”, Sampson added that the majority of the difficulties were resolved.
He added that the majority of problems were experienced in the Cape metro areas.
“The metro for example works in 11 areas. Two of our area managers started moving too late and that affected the areas of Panorama and Claremont,” Sampson said.
Sampson said at a voting station in Barcelona, Gugulethu, the IEC had to deploy a mediation team to resolve a community dispute as people were unhappy with the voting station's presiding officer.
Sampson said there were two conflicting reports from the voting station.
“The one was that things are not running as smooth as they should. The other was that people are actually voting so we're just trying to follow up on that,” he said.
Weather conditions in George in the Southern Cape affected a polling station when a strong winds blew down a tent meant to serve as a polling station.
“The municipality disaster management assisted in re-erecting the tents but the wind was too strong,” he added.
Sampson said the voting station was then moved to a nearby venue, a container which is usually used as a crèche.
Cape Argus