Stats SA: We are not in position to establish ‘double voting’
Statistician-general Risenga Maluleke says Statistics South Africa is not in a position to establish if anyone had managed to double vote.
Maluleke was answering questions in Tshwane on Tuesday morning, shortly after delivering the quarterly labour force survey.
“We went to meet with all political parties and we briefed them. Including those political parties that were much more aggrieved and when we briefed them they asked us if we could be in a position to establish double voting.
“We said we would not be in a position to do so, because once a ballot paper is dropped into a ballot box, you can no longer link it to the individual on the basis that it does not have identifiers.
“But the fact that we were able to establish that 13 voting districts as a potential, doesn’t mean that there was double voting. They had a potential on the basis of the fact that there were a lot more people with section 24A forms filled as a proportion to people who voted.
“On the basis on that, it was a question of potential, Stats SA would have no capacity and nobody would be able to establish who the ballot papers belongs to.”
Last week’s national elections was marred by allegations of double voting and insufficient ballot papers.
This subsequently led the 27 political parties to file court papers, demanding an independent audit into double voting.
Maluleke says the only role Stats SA played in the elections was to provide a sample base quality assurance.
“What we did specifically was to look at all the 23 000 voting districts of which we took a representative sample with 97% confidence levels.
“We came back with a representative sample of 1020 voting districts which we went further to understand what has happened and by law, every person who goes and votes outside their voting district has to fill a section 24 A form.”