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Electoral Court Reserves Judgment in MKP Challenge Over Two‑Hour IEC Results Blackout

The court must decide whether oral expert evidence is needed to test if a public reporting outage undermined confidence in the 2024 election results.

Jacob Zuma in the Electoral Court to hear the MK party's bid to have the 2024 national and provincial elections set aside. Picture: Screengrab.
The MK party’s election challenge pivots from vote rigging accusations to questioning a two-hour IEC results system glitch.

Overview

  • The Electoral Court in Johannesburg reserved judgment after hearing arguments on Wednesday, June 17, in the uMkhonto weSizwe Party’s legal challenge to the IEC.
  • MKP has narrowed its case to a two‑hour outage of the IEC’s public results dashboard and is seeking an oral hearing to call and cross‑examine technical experts about that interruption.
  • The IEC says the interruption affected only the public reporting layer and did not impact vote capture, counting, or verification, and it has asked the court to dismiss the challenge.
  • IEC counsel argued the MKP’s latest application repeats earlier unsuccessful court efforts and amounts to an abuse of process, while MKP says expert evidence is needed to explain an intervention the party calls unexplained.
  • The court’s decision will shape whether parties can use oral technical evidence to probe election‑system incidents and will influence public confidence in electoral administration ahead of future polls.