One in four votes audited as 18 municipalities finish counting

Vote counting in the 2026 Local Government Elections is under way after voting stations closed at 9pm on 4 November, with the Electoral Commission reporting that a quarter of the expected result slips had already been independently audited by 9am on Thursday.

Chief Electoral Officer Sy Mamabolo, briefing media, said counting, tallying and verification had continued through the night in the presence of political party agents, independent candidate agents and accredited observers.

By 9am, 66 073 result slips were expected from the local municipality, metros and district council votes across 23 696 voting stations countrywide. Of those, about 23 444 (35.5%) had been scanned into the results system, 22 983 (34.8%) had been captured, and 16 791 (25.4%) had been independently audited.

Results from 18 local municipalities, 7% of the total, had been concluded at that point. The Commission said that at the same time in the 2021 elections only seven municipalities were completed, and that the improved capturing rate came despite longer ballot papers, more contestants and higher voter participation.

Mamabolo set out the procedure behind those numbers. Counting happens at the voting station where the ballots were cast, he said, so that every ballot paper is accounted for at every station and recorded. A result slip is then captured in duplicate in front of party and independent agents and observers, who may record and photograph the slips. The slips travel in tamper-evident envelopes to the Commission’s local capturing site, where they are subjected to double blind capturing, scanned into the results system, and audited by independent auditors across the entire population of results rather than a sample.

The Commission expressed confidence that all voters who were in line at the 9pm cut-off were given the opportunity to cast their ballots.

It appealed to political parties, independent candidates and their supporters to exercise patience while counting and capturing unfold, and urged candidates and political roleplayers to refrain from spreading unverified information or disinformation about results, warning this could create unnecessary tensions, incite violence and potentially result in damage to property and injuries.

Results are being published on the Commission’s website at www.elections.org.za and on its mobile app, with updates on its WhatsApp channel at 0600 88 0000. The briefing came as political parties kept watch over results coming in, and as government thanked voters for casting their ballots.

This report is based on SAnews (South African Government News Agency), the government’s own news agency, at https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/lge-2026-vote-counting-underway. The figures are those the Commission gave at its Thursday morning briefing and will have moved since.