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The 2000 municipal elections, which took place on 5 December, constituted a landmark event in the democratic consolidation in South Africa. Despite the fact that more than 2 ballots per voter had to be cast in certain non-metropolitan areas, some 96% of those who voted indicated that the voting procedures were easy to understand. This finding is based on the first-ever municipal exit poll conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) on election day. The exit poll was conducted among a sample of 11 135 voters in some 209 voting stations. A significant number of voters (46%) felt that the municipal elections were better organised, with 37% indicating that arrangements were more or less the same as they had been in the June 1999 national elections. According to Dr Meshack Khosa, acting executive director of Democracy and Governance at the HSRC, "these findings confirm that the IEC has now become even more efficient in their logistical arrangements, and indeed in entrenching democracy in South Africa". In the majority of voting stations sampled, 86% of voters spent less than 30 minutes in the queue waiting to cast their votes. Only 6% of all voters were in the queue for more than an hour. "The short queues resulted from the lower turn-out which reduced pressure at voting stations, as well as from the fact that virtually all the voters had prior experience of voting, making the process easier and faster", declared Dr Khosa.
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