Applications for special votes close on May 3

The Independent Electoral Commission reminds voters that the deadline for applications for special votes in this year’s national and provincial elections is this Friday, May 3.

All applications for special votes, for the purposes of home visits and voting station visits, opened on April 15.

Home visits are intended for those voters who are unable to travel to voting stations, while special votes at voting stations are for everyone who is unable to be at the voting station on election day.

This year’s elections will take place on May 29.

Special voting will be conducted on the two days preceding election day — May 27 and 28 — and will take place from 9am to 5pm.

Contrary to circulating WhatsApp messages regarding automatic availability of special votes for voters who are 60 years and older, there is no age-based access to a special vote at the voting station.

All special votes are only available on application through one of the following mechanisms:

• Using our secured online application form found at www.elections.org.za

• By SMSing your identity number to 32249 (R1 per SMS) for voting station visit only.

• By visiting your local IEC office and submitting an Appendix 1B form for a voting station special vote.

• By visiting your local IEC office and submitting an Appendix 1A form for a home visit special vote.

Forms can also be handdelivered, and someone else can deliver a form on behalf of a voter.

In terms of voting outside of a voting station of registration, the Electoral Commission reemphasises the general principle of election administration that voters must vote where they are registered.

However, in the event that a voter intends to be in a different voting district on voting day, they must notify the Commission of their intended absence from their voting district and indicate the voting station where they wish to cast the vote.

A notification portal is available on the website for this purpose. Notifications in this regard will close on May 17.

The Commission has noted media enquiries and reports alleging that MK party submitted fraudulent signatures in fulfilment of the candidate nomination requirements.

Furthermore, we noted that a criminal complaint has been laid with the South African Police Service.

The Commission calls on the crime investigation authorities to expedite the investigations in order to establish the verity of the allegations made.

An expeditious investigation is essential for the conduct of free and fair elections.

The Commission further confirms that the signature portal of the candidate nomination system verifies whether the identity numbers submitted were of registered citizens of South Africa.

In other words, this entails establishing whether the person is a citizen, alive and registered on the voters’ roll.

The Commission had indicated in the parliamentary process during debates on the institutionalisation of the signature requirement that it would be impossible to establish whether the signatures proffered were indeed of those persons who purported to have given them.