WITH less than a month to go before local government elections, the Western Cape’s chief electoral officer said the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) was ready for an unprecedented vote which will have more parties vying for seats than in any other province.
Briefing the Cape Town media yesterday, Courtney Sampson said the City would have the longest proportional list ballot paper of any municipality in South Africa, with 37 parties hoping to be seated among the 210 available seats after the August 3 election.
Registered voters who want to cast special votes on August 1 and 2 have until Friday to apply either on the IEC’s website or via texting 32249 along with their ID numbers.
Sampson said voting stations for special votes would be open on August 1 and 2 from 8am to 5pm. Should all special votes registered for the particular voting station have been cast before 5pm, the station will be closed.
On August 3, voting stations will open at 7am and close at 5pm, Sampson said South Africa generally had long voting hours in the past, but due to the day being a public holiday, voters had ample time to cast their ballots.
There will be 402 wards being contested during the local government elections in the Western Cape, and for the first time there will be more than three million registered voters in the province. This is a 52% increase from the 2000 local government elections.
The IEC will have just under 20 000 people working for it during the election to handle the 25 other elections taking place for proportional lists and five elections for the district municipalities.
“We don’t celebrate enough that we have one of the most transparent electoral processes in the world… The names of the presiding officers are given to political party representatives and are allowed to give feedback on those people,” said Sampson.
He said due to South Africa’s current political climate, it was better to have that level of transparency as it removes the risk of any presiding officer undermining the democratic process on election day.
Two party agents from each of the political parties, trained by the IEC, will be located in each voting station and will be present to oversee the voting process.
“The party agents play a crucial role, but it’s going to be quite challenging because of the number of parties participating in the elections. If each party brings two party agents in there, there’s going to be no room,” said Sampson.
He said it was unlikely that the election process could be manipulated – for example, as in people trying to vote twice – due to the numerous safeguards which have been put in place over past elections.
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