WALLIS AJ The IEC had filed an opposing affidavit before the date of the December by-elections. Thereafter the applicants delivered an extensive reply together with the amended notice of motion. That in turn resulted in the delivery by the IEC of a rejoining affidavit setting out in some detail, with copious annexures, the results of its own investigations after the by-elections. These revealed the matters around which the later debate concerning irregularities has revolved. The affidavit prompted a surrejoinder from the applicants and shortly before the hearing nine additional bundles of documents were delivered to the Electoral Court. It is apparent from this that the material before the Electoral Court had so altered in character by the time that the case was heard, that it was in many respects a different case from that which had initially been brought. [19] The Electoral Court held that it lacked jurisdiction to order the IEC to commission an independent forensic investigation into the registration of voters as requested by the applicants. That this might be its conclusion must have emerged in the course of argument, because the judgment records that in reply counsel confined the claim to one for alternative relief along the lines set out in paragraphs 4.1 and 4.2 of the amended relief, but shorn of the preamble linking it to the investigation. For various reasons the majority in the Electoral Court refused this relief in a judgment by Moshidi J. [20] First, it held that, in view of the manner in which the prayer for relief was couched, the grant of this relief depended on the order that the IEC commission an independent forensic investigation. It followed that the refusal of the prior relief inevitably dictated the refusal of the prayer to set aside the result of the by-elections. Second, it held that the outcome of the by-elections was not materially affected by the registration in these wards of some voters who were not entitled to be so registered because, if the total number of votes cast by such voters were deducted from the total of the winning candidate, the latter would still have won. Third, it held that the applicants’ remedy for their complaint about the registration of voters in these wards, who were not at the time of registration ordinarily resident in them, was to pursue an 11