The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) of South Africa (SA) has implemented strict security measures to prevent fraudulent voting after ballot papers and an official validation stamp were stolen from a voting station in eThekwini\u2019s Ward 2, KwaZulu-Natal province.<\/p>\n
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Addressing journalists at the National Results Operations Centre in Midrand, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer Masego Sheburi confirmed that the theft occurred during the two-day special voting period, triggering an immediate police investigation and security override across the affected municipal ward.<\/p>\n
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Sheburi reassured voters that any attempt to introduce the stolen ballot papers into the official vote tally on election day would be promptly detected and invalidated:<\/p>\n
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“There are 20 voting stations in that ward. We have put in measures to ensure that should those ballots surface at any of those voting stations we will be able to identify, because it is a requirement that a ballot must be validated by a stamp at the back. If the stamp that was stolen together with those ballots is used, it is distinguishable from the stamps that are used on election day because it was allocated for use only for special voting days. A case has been opened with SAPS, and our staff have been relieved of their duties for dereliction at that voting station.”<\/p>\n
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The SA Police Service has opened a criminal docket to trace the missing election material, while the IEC has replaced the compromised polling staff and deployed fresh security protocols to maintain the integrity of the vote across Ward 2.<\/p>\n
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–ChannelAfrica–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":21186,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-49989","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"IEC tightens voting security after ballot theft in eThekwini","published_date":"2026-11-04 17:23:57","news_description":"IEC tightens voting security after ballot theft in eThekwini","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/49989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/49989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49991,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/49989\/revisions\/49991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=49989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}