IEC ZA

A Typescript module to retrieve data from the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa's API.

Notes

• This module is not affiliated with the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa. It is an unofficial module created to make it easier to retrieve data from the IEC's API. See #IEC information for more information.
• Supports National/Provincial Elections (NPE) and Local Government Elections (LGE) result surfaces (ballots, seats, candidates, councilors, progress, delimitation, parties, latest results, voting stations).
• Voter lookup, observer, and special-vote application endpoints are intentionally out of scope.
• It is mostly a pass-through to the IEC's API. Some smarter features may be added in the future.

Installation

NPM

npm install iec-za

Local development (sibling repo)

From a consumer such as electionengine:

npm install ../iec-za

Rebuild after source changes:

cd ../iec-za && npm run build

Environmental variables

Copy dotenv file to .env and fill in the required fields.

IEC_USERNAME="username"
IEC_PASSWORD="password"
IEC_URL="https://api.elections.org.za" # Optional

You can also set the environment variables directly.

export IEC_USERNAME="username"
export IEC_PASSWORD="password"

IEC information

• You can get a username and password by emailing the IEC at [email protected]

• Please read and abide by the IEC's API terms and conditions

• The documentation for the IEC API is available here

Usage

import { IEC } from 'iec-za';

const iec = new IEC(); // or new IEC({ username: 'username', password: 'password', url: 'https://api.elections.org.za', version: 'v1' });
async function main() {
    const electoralEventTypes = await iec.electoralEventTypes();
    const lgeType = electoralEventTypes.find((t) => /local\s+government/i.test(t.Description));
    const events = await iec.electoralEvents(lgeType!.ID);
    const event2021 = events.find((e) => e.Description.includes('2021'));
    const results = await iec.LGEBallotResults(event2021!.ID);
    console.log(results.PartyBallotResults[0]);
}

Methods

For more information on the methods, please refer to the IEC API documentation

Auth / low-level

login(token?)

• Logs in to the IEC API and returns a token.
• Pass an existing token to reuse it when still valid.
• Not strictly required — other methods log in automatically.

get(endpoint)

• Low-level GET against /api/{version}/{endpoint}.
• Prefer the typed methods below.

Electoral events & progress

electoralEventTypes()

• Returns electoral event types (National, Provincial, Local Government, …).

electoralEvents(electionTypeId, parentEventId?)

• Returns electoral events for a type; optional ParentEventID for by-elections.

electoralEventResultsProgress(eventId)

electoralEventProgressProvince(eventId, provinceId)

electoralEventProgressMunicipality(eventId, provinceId, municipalityId)

electoralEventProgressWard(eventId, provinceId, municipalityId, wardId)

• Counting progress (VDResultsIn, VDTotal, SeatCalculationCompleted).
• Municipality and ward progress require ProvinceID per the IEC contract.

Delimitation & parties

delimitations(eventId) → provinces

delimitationsProvince(eventId, provinceId) → municipalities

delimitationsMunicipality(eventId, provinceId, municipalityId) → wards

delimitationsWard(eventId, provinceId, municipalityId, wardId) → voting districts

delimitationsLatLong(lat, long) → delimitation for a coordinate

contestingParties(eventId, provinceId?, municipalityId?)

• Contesting parties for an event, optionally filtered by province/municipality.

NPE (National / Provincial)

NPEBallotResults(eventId)

NPEBallotResultsProvince(eventId, provinceId)

NPEBallotResultsMunicipality(eventId, provinceId, municipalityId)

NPEBallotResultsVotingDistrict(eventId, provinceId, municipalityId, vdNumber)

NPESeatCalculationResults(eventId)

NPESeatCalculationResultsProvince(eventId, provinceId)

NPESeatAllocationResults(eventId, partyId)

NPECandidates(eventId, partyId)

LGE (Local Government)

LGEBallotResults(eventId)

LGEBallotResultsProvince(eventId, provinceId)

LGEBallotResultsMunicipality(eventId, provinceId, municipalityId)

LGEBallotResultsWard(eventId, provinceId, municipalityId, wardId)

LGEBallotResultsVotingDistrict(eventId, provinceId, municipalityId, vdNumber)

• Party ballots include Ward_ValidVotes, PR_ValidVotes, DC40Perc_ValidVotes, and TotalValidVotes.

LGESeatCalculationResults(eventId, municipalityId)

• Municipal council seat allocation (ward + PR seats per party).

LGECandidatesByWard(eventId, wardId)

LGECandidatesByMunicipality(eventId, municipalityId)

• Ward contestants vs PR list candidates (ListOrderNo on PR).

LGEWardCouncilor(wardId)

LGEWardCouncilorByLatLong(lat, long)

LGECouncilorsByEvent(eventId)

Live feeds / stations

LatestResultsIn(eventId, numberOfVDs)

VotingStationDetailsByVD(vdNumber)

VotingStationDetailsByLocation(lat, long)

VotingStationsByEvent(eventId)

Tests

npm run test:unit   # mocked URL / error-path tests (no credentials)
npm run test:live   # live IEC NPE + LGE (requires IEC_USERNAME / IEC_PASSWORD)
npm test            # unit + live

Live LGE tests discover the 2021 Local Government Election and traverse a real province → municipality → ward → VD before exercising ballot, seat, candidate, councilor, progress, party, and station endpoints.

License

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2024 Jason Norwood-Young

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.