Public Opinion Matters

Members of Parliament - 66 or 67?

2009-04-24T12:24:00.002+02:00

Votes determine the seats allocated to members of parliament. Why should the ANC essentially get the extra 1 seat that the spoilt votes created?

Latest Results - 11:21AM

2009-04-24T11:51:00.006+02:00

As at 11:21:47AM the number of votes counted were 13,983,305.00

Of these 193,302.00 have been counted as SPOILED VOTES

The results are as follows:

ANC 9,245,512.00 66.12% (with spoilt incl.) 67.05% (with spoilt excl.)

DA 2,136,935.00 15.28% (with spoilt incl.) 15.50% (with spoilt excl.)

COPE 1,040,841.00 7.44% (with spoilt incl.) 7.55% (with spoilt excl.)

IFP 593,504.00 4.24% (with spoilt incl.) 4.30% (with spoilt excl.)

ID 123,807.00 0.89% (with spoilt incl.) 0.90% (with spoilt excl.)

UDM 127,970.00 0.92% (with spoilt incl.) 0.93% (with spoilt excl.)

BOTTOM LINE: if one includes the spoilt votes (like the UK does) then the ANC does not yet have the 2/3rd majority.

66.12 is close but it is NOT 2/3rd's

Spoiled Votes

2009-04-24T11:41:00.004+02:00

What exactly is a spoilt vote?

Wikipedia describes a spoined vote as one of the following:

Ways of spoiling a ballot include:

leaving the ballot blank (though some ballots include an explicit "none of the above" option)
completing the ballot in an illogical or unapproved manner, such as:
- casting more than the permitted number of votes, for example, more than one vote in a plurality voting system, an overvote.
- casting fewer than the permitted number of votes, for example, casting only 2 votes in a vote-for-three race, an undervote.
- filling a preference ballot out of sequence, e.g. 1-2-2-3-4 or 1-2-4-5-6, or marking such a ballot with an "X" where that is not permitted.
filling the ballot in a manner which is illegible or incomprehensible.
physically deforming ballots, especially those counted by machine.
writing on the ballot, other than the minimal marks necessary to complete it, may be regarded as compromising the secrecy of the ballot due to the possibility of handwriting analysisestablishing the voter's identity.

Spoilt votes may be the result of a deliberate act by the voter;

The validity of the election may be questioned if there is an unusually high proportion of spoilt votes, however, in countries such as the UK where a spoilt ballot paper counts towards the voter turnout, some voters will deliberately spoil their ballot paper to show disapproval of the candidates available whilst still taking part in the electoral process. In theory, a UK election could have a 100% turnout with no votes cast for any of the candidates if every registered voter were to spoil their paper, although this is highly improbable.

If the IEC does not include the spoilt votes in the count then this could make a HUGE difference into whether the ANC gets a 2/3rd's majority.

The average length of time that people stood in the queues to vote was well over 2 hours for most people. Surely their votes should count? Even a spoiled vote should count as a vote!

SA Elections

2009-04-24T11:07:00.004+02:00

I've been tracking the counts for the South African elections for over 24 hours now.

These have then been posted on my twitter and facebook profile and some of them even made their way onto the News24 website.

Most of my posts have been about the national results as well as the results for the Western Cape.

The statistics were retrieved from the IEC website and then transferred to a spreadsheet on google docs. I had a specially created field in the spreadsheet that would allow me to easily post the result on twitter

I love numbers and analysis, which why I probably love my job (systems and web analyst), and so this process of tracking has been quite fun. My family and friends have started coming up with weird nicknames for me though.... like 'elections nerd' and making comments about my status on facebook (stats, stats and stats).

I'm incredibly excited and proud to be a part of this whole experience....!

That wriggled and tickled and wiggled inside her......

2009-02-25T19:20:00.006+02:00

The name of the retail outlet has not been included because, even though the post is not deflamatory in any way, I feel it only fair that they be given a chance to correct the mistake.

You may be interested to know some more information about the Sac Spider. See my mother's comment below:

"I have subsequently investigated the species of the offending spider and discovered that it is a Cheiracanthium fulcatum, commonly known as the sac spider. These spiders have cytotoxic venom, which affects the cellular tissue usually restricted to the area of the bite but can spread. The bite is at first painless with symptoms developing about 2-8 hours after the bite. It starts by resembling a mosquito sting, becoming more painful and swollen. Eventually it ulcerates into a large surface lesion (up to 10 centimetres) that will require medical attention. Treatment with antibiotics might be required to treat secondary infections. The wound may take between two and 4 weeks to heal but the lesion might take months to improve. In some cases ugly scarring might occur that might require plastic surgery. This is one of the nastiest spiders in South Africa and more people are hospitalised because of bites from this species than any other spider in SA."

We've recently had a few scares in South Africa with regards to this particular spider and it would be interesting to find out what responses there are (could be) to the possibility of finding a clutter of spiders in a bunch of grapes. How often does this happen?

The writer of the following page also seems to have found them in a bunch of grapes.
http://www.biodiversityexplorer.org/arachnids/spiders/miturgidae/cheiracanthium.htm

A Clutter of Sac Spiders & a Big Bunch of Grapes

2009-02-25T10:05:00.004+02:00

Grapes bought at an upmarket store contained a suprising discovery inside - A nest of Sac Spiders

My mother had an experience yesterday that would have caused most people to have an accident in their car if the same thing had happened to them. Thank goodness my mum's not arachnophobic!

"I bought them yesterday morning (23rd February 2009) at about 12h30 at ----------, Dainfern (Gauteng, South Africa).

As you can see by the pics, I had already (blindly) eaten some of them from my passenger seat, whilst I was driving. Then I saw a white fluffy bit on the grape that was about to be popped into my mouth!!!"

Have a look at the photographs - you can clearly see the sac that was nestled within the grapes. This sac was filled with hundreds of baby spiders. The mother spider can be seen in one of the other photos.

The retail company is listed on www.hellopeter.com as a company who doesn't care or respond, which I find quite surpising, especially considering that their staff seem to know about the www.hellopeter.com website.

It's going to be interesting to see how they respond to this incident....

You can find out more about the sac spider on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheiracanthium_inclusum

or see photo's of the effects of the bites:
http://www.biodiversityexplorer.org/arachnids/spiders/bites.htm

also:
http://www.biodiversityexplorer.org/arachnids/spiders/miturgidae/cheiracanthium.htm

There seems to be a bit of a debate going on in South Africa on how poisonous this spider actually is....

Another reference to the sac spider can be found at:

http://www.scienceray.com/Biology/Zoology/Deadly-Spiders-of-the-World.152047#

Sac Spider

There are many kinds of Sac Spiders through out Europe. More than 200 species of yellow sac spiders throughout parts of the world. There's ongoing research into the effects of this spider's bite; in South Africa it is felt they are responsible for 90% of deaths concerning spider bites.