IEC bid to allay voters’ fears

THE Electoral Commission has admitted that South Africans are doubting its credibility after many voters who had registered for this year’s local government elections found their addresses had not been captured correctly when they checked at their polling stations last weekend.

Electoral Commission spokeswoman Kate Bapela said the address details from the first registration weekend had still not been fully captured, but expressed confidence that the elections would be free and fair.

“We are in the final stages of capturing. We are now about to transfer these address details onto the voters roll,” she said.

“The IEC had taken precautions to ensure that voters who registered in the registration were not served the SMS message. There has, however, been a few instances where such people received the SMS. This was not the intention.”

The Sunday Times received various complaints in this regard from places including Pietermaritzburg, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Ceres, and angry voters took to social media to vent their frustrations about being told via SMS that no addresses for them existed.

An elderly couple who have voted at the same polling station in Sea Point, Cape Town, for 36 years were astounded when told no address for them existed.

Bapela said at the conception of the voters roll after democratisation, the legal requirement was to register a person in the voting district in which they resided. This did not necessarily require an address.

“On this basis, the IEC did not always retain the voters’ addresses. The Constitutional Court changed that approach on November 30 last year and held that an address is required or at least sufficient particulars regarding a person’s residence in order to place them in the correct voting district,” she said.

Several farm-dwellers were also confronted by voters rolls claiming that their addresses were invalid, including farmers in the Kimberley district.

According to Bapela, the Constitutional Court has taken a view that generic addresses such as farm names are not good enough for purposes of registering a voter in the voting district of ordinary residence.

“However, the IEC has always understood the judgment of the Constitutional Court to be prospective from November 30 2015. This is why the IEC is going back to court to ensure the voting rights of registered voters are protected,” she said.

The Constitutional Court is expected to hand down its final judgment on May 9.

The election date is August 3, and no registered voter need fear they would be removed from the voters roll at this stage because of the address issue, she said.

Bapela gave the assurance that no voter could be removed from the voters roll unless they died, requested to be removed or ceased to be citizens.