Malawi vote counting system collapses, delays election results

TVC NEWS [LILONGWE]- The much relied upon Malawi electronic system had been reported broken-down, forcing election officials to resort to fax and email to tally votes from this week's election.
It has also caused unanticipated delay in the release of any results, the chief elections officer said Thursday.
The system "is refusing to take the information from the ground where our data clerks are stationed to send the results," chief elections officer Willie Kalonga disclosed to newsmen two days after the vote.
TVC NEWS gathered that as a "back-up solution," officials in the southern African country's 28 districts were sending the results manually via fax and email to the national elections centre in Blantyre.
The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) has not yet released any preliminary results after Tuesday's tight-run polls, which pit incumbent Joyce Banda against her rival and predecessor's brother Peter Mutharika.
The military was deployed to restore calm after irate voters set alight voting stations when election materials were unavailable and some bureaus opened 10 hours late.
Voting spilled into an unscheduled second day Wednesday at 13 voting stations, and thousands queued to cast their ballot.
MEC chairman Maxon Mbendera said Wednesday said the Commission will only announce results when 30 percent of the votes have been counted, and is currently "not anywhere in the neighbourhood" of that figure