South Africa’s Electoral Commission Portal Crashes During Vote Count

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) issued an apology for the malfunction on its results viewing portal.

The results page experienced a blank screen early Friday morning but was reinstated after approximately two hours.

The IEC mentioned that despite the glitch, local offices were actively capturing results, while technicians were diligently working to restore services.

While the commission did not provide a reason for the disruption, it assured that the results had not been compromised.

“We apologise for the issue with our public-facing system, and are working on restoring the service. The results system is still operational and local offices continue to capture results,” said the IEC.

In an update, the electoral body said: “The Electoral Commission confirms it has experienced interruption in the replication of data from its national data centre and the various Results Operation Centres.

“The data in the data centre remains intact and the results have not been compromised. All services have since been restored and the leaderboard is working normally. Result processing continues unaffected.”

Once the portal was back online, results had been logged from 54.9 percent of polling stations, with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) receiving 41.86 percent of the votes.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) had 23.67 percent while the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) secured 19.98 percent.