Cape Town – The delegates to the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) heard on Tuesday that 95% of the South African voters have complete addresses on the voters roll.
This emerged when the Electoral Commission of South Africa briefed the justice and security select committee on the Electoral Laws Amendment Bill, which was referred to the NCOP after being passed by the National Assembly last week.
The bill seeks to amend the Electoral Commission Act, the Electoral Act, and the Local Government: Municipal Electoral Act.
Chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo said the bill provided for the procedure to affirm the right of voters while the electoral body complied with the Constitutional Court judgment on addresses of voters.
"At the moment, 24.6 million South Africans on the voters roll do have a complete address for them," Mamabolo said.
"Ninety five percent of voters have complete addresses.
“There is a residual 1.2 million persons for whom we don't have an address," he said, adding the number of people without addresses was reduced from six million to 1.2 million from when the court made its ruling.
"Our position is that such persons do not lose the right to vote, but we will still need to comply with the requirements of the decision of the Constitutional Court.
“We are proposing a varied procedure that entails supplying an address and being given a ballot paper," Mamabolo said.
He told MPs that the bill provided for voters to vote in voting stations upon notifying the chief electoral officer of their intention to do so.
According to Mamabolo, the practice of shopping for shorter queues at voting stations caused logistical problems.
"The shopping for queues undermines the integrity of logistical plans, and hence, you hear ballot papers are finished and there are no VEC 4 forms.
“It is undesirable in orderly conducting of voting," he said.
The delegates to the NCOP also heard that the bill also provided for voters appearing on the country's voters roll to notify the chief electoral officer if they would be overseas to cast their ballot on voting day.
Expatriates, who appear on the voters roll for persons ordinarily resident at a place outside South Africa, would need to present themselves at the embassies on the election day.
"Persons registered on the international voters roll in London but will be in Canberra, Australia, you are required to notify the chief electoral officer of the intention so that an arrangement can be made for you," Mamabolo said.
There was also a provision that provided for the determination of the number of seats in the legislatures.
Since 1999, the number of seats have remained the same in all nine provinces despite the significant movement in the population.
The MPs also heard that the bill also made a provision for registering parties at national, provincial, district municipality and metro level.
Mamabolo said any person could register a party and objections must be lodged within 14 days with the IEC.
The provision requires people to lodge objections at the initial stage of application.
"An appeal is limited to those persons or parties which had at the first level of the process already raised an objection.
“This is important so as not to have another bite at the cherry without having participated in the first phase."
Mamabolo said the bill also made provision for the electoral officer to redact information in the voters roll when candidates or parties pay a prescribed fee for copies roll.
Parties could make electronic submission of candidate lists and submit acceptance of nomination when it was required within a stipulated time.
Committee chairperson Shahidabibi Shaikh said they would not compromise on the public participation process.
"We will advertise as soon as we can.
“We would give the public sufficient time until January 22 to make necessary submissions they need to make," Shaikh said.
She said they would convene a meeting towards the end of January to consider the submissions and agree on a process to move forward.
Political Bureau