IEC: Registration for municipal elections progressing well
As various political parties on Sunday urged voters around the country to register to vote in the August 3 local government elections, the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) thanked all voters who had already visited their voting stations to register and update their registration and address details.
The IEC also made a final urgent appeal to voters to use the last hours of the registration weekend to ensuring they were ready to vote on election day.
“Voting stations will remain open until 5pm today [Sunday]. Thereafter, registration will only take place at local IEC offices during office hours until the proclamation of the municipal elections,” the IEC said in a statement.
As at 11am on Sunday, just nine voting stations – all in the Vhembe area in Limpopo – had not opened.
Last ditch engagements were underway between the IEC, community leaders, and security agencies to open the last nine voting stations to allow all residents the opportunity to register for the upcoming elections.
The remaining 22,608 voting stations throughout the country reported open and operating smoothly, the IEC said.
Early indications of voter turnout captured from about 70 percent of stations showed that over 1.2 million voters visited voting stations on Saturday to register, re-register at new voting stations, or re-register and provide updated address details at their existing voting station.
From Sunday night, when voting stations closed, registration officials would dock the “zip zip” scanners from each station to download the scanned ID numbers of all visitors to stations. This information would be combined and collated at provincial and national offices and the IEC hoped to be able to indicate by mid-week the numbers of new registrations and updated registrations.
“At the same time all REC 1 registration forms and REC AS supplementary forms (used where voters do not have formal addresses) will urgently be couriered to the national office where a team of data capturers is working 24/7 to scan and capture the voters’ details, including address details, to be included on the final voters’ roll for the 2016 municipal elections,” the IEC said.
On Saturday, IEC chief electoral officer Mosotho Moepya said about 40 of the 22,617 voting stations had experienced problems.
“Fewer than 40 voting stations – or just 0.17 percent – had not opened earlier today [Saturday] due to a range of factors, including logistic challenges such as keys to venues not being available, double booking of venues, delays in staff arrivals, and two vehicle accidents reported,” said Moepya.
“Of the 40 stations not open at [11am] more than half were in the Vhembe area in Limpopo where on-going engagement with the community was being undertaken in an attempt to open the stations as soon as possible,” said Moepya.
“Following negotiations with community leaders, the electoral commission has removed any reference to either Malamulele or Vuwani, naming the new municipality ‘LIM345 – New Municipality’. The new municipality will only be named by the relevant authorities once it has been established after the election,” he said.
He said isolated instances of protest action had also been reported in Paarl in the Western Cape, Ntabankulu and Umtata in the Eastern Cape, and at four voting stations in Kwazulu-Natal in Ladysmith, Umfolozi, and Escourt.