Former DA Gauteng MPL Mike Moriarty has described some of the logistical glitches which were experienced by the IEC on election day as inexcusable.

The IEC spent the day updating the nation at the Results Operations Centre in Pretoria yesterday detailing the problems experienced by voters at various polling stations.

Common among these were polling stations running out of ballot papers. This was largely caused by voters who reported at stations they did not register in.

“There were too many inexcusable glitches. If you know that you’ve got a polling station that has got 3,500 voters, you will supply 3,500 ballot papers, not 1,000 or 1,500. That is what they were doing and by 10am they would run out. People then would start looking for other polling stations,” Moriarty told Sowetan.

“It was a man-made disaster. A huge amount of difficulties that were created were avoidable. That is our big gripe on this election,” he said.

Moriarty said the IEC informed political parties that it had a contingency plan which was meant to cater for unforeseen circumstances, but he said the commision’s ability to deliver on this was “too slow”.

“You had people waiting for hours for ballots to arrive. Whatever they had [as a contingency plan]…was not good enough,” he said.

The IEC also experienced serious problems caused by load-shedding, weather conditions and protests which delayed the opening of some of the polling stations.