The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) deployed 56,000 Voter Management Devices (VMDs) to oversee the 2026 Local Government Elections, enhancing voter verification, station management, and real-time results reporting across South Africa. This includes 8,000 new devices procured by the IEC and 8,000 donated by Gauteng’s provincial government, expanding the fleet by 16,000 since the start of the election period.
IEC Chief Electoral Officer Sy Mamabolo said the technology transformed election management from a fragmented process into an integrated, information-driven operation. “The significance of this infrastructure lies in its ability to transform election management from a largely decentralised activity into a more integrated and information-driven operational environment,” he said during a post-election briefing on 8 November.
The VMDs were used for multiple election functions: monitoring voter turnout, tracking ballot paper use, recording polling station staff attendance, and reporting the opening and closing times of voting stations. The devices were also paired with handheld barcode scanners and sequence numbers on voter rolls, steps that reportedly accelerated voter processing on the ground.
By the morning of 4 November, IEC Deputy Chief Electoral Officer Masego Shiburi reported that approximately 3.5 million voters had cast their ballots, crediting the technology with speeding up the vote.
The IEC also launched a Virtual Results Operating Centre (ROC), which granted political parties and candidates remote access to selected results applications. According to the commission, 1,149 users, representing 85 active political parties and 328 individual party officials, registered on the platform to monitor election operations and log issues through the enhanced Issue Tracker system. This feature enabled users to report any problems impairing the election process, with over 1,000 election-related cases resolved during voting and results collation.
Preliminary election results were transmitted rapidly via an Application Programming Interface (API) to media, political parties, and other stakeholders once audited. The IEC reported 14.3 million information requests through the API during the election period, highlighting the volume of real-time engagement.
Special voting began on 2 November, with nearly 99% of voting stations opening on time at 08:00, a marked improvement for operational punctuality. However, in the City of Cape Town Municipality, only 10 out of 116 wards had opened voting stations by 10:30 on the first day of special voting.
The IEC approved a record 2,655,067 special vote applications, representing a 131% increase from the 2021 elections. This surge demonstrated greater voter participation facilitated by easier access to voting options.
Independent media coverage confirmed many of the IEC’s technological improvements, such as the efficiency of handheld scanners and the use of sequence numbers in speeding voter processing. Nevertheless, some finer details like exact user numbers on the Virtual ROC and API request counts remain unverified outside IEC sources.
Overall, the IEC described these technological advances as modernising election management with greater transparency and operational oversight. While the commission’s assessment suggests improvements in speed and information access, concrete independent measurements of these benefits are not yet available.
The IEC continues to analyse the election outcomes and operational data. CapeFlats.co.za will provide further updates as more information is confirmed in the coming weeks.