Cape Town - The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) will print a total of 7.5 million ballot papers in the Western Cape in preparation for the upcoming local government elections.
Provincial electoral officer Michael Hendrickse said 4 million ballot papers would be printed for the City of Cape Town and 3.5 million for other municipalities across the province.
“It means 7.5 million individual ballot papers,” Hendrickse said at a media information session.
Hendrickse also said they would have 436 different types of ballot papers.
Each election would be different because each ballot paper for the wards would have different names of candidates.
The ballot papers for PR candidates would also have different names of political parties as not all would contest in all the 30 municipalities.
He said printing the ballot papers was the first part of their work as they still need to ensure that the ballot papers were correctly labelled and packaged for the more than 1 500 voting stations in all wards.
Hendrickse also said they would ensure that there was enough bulk material to be used on November 1 election day.
“We use a logistic system to track material that is bought, stored and we send out so that we know where this material is in our chain of distribution in the lead up to the elections,” he said.
Hendrickse explained that among the election material were security items that they have to ensure control over, such as indelible ink and the stamps used to mark the ballot papers in order to make them official before given to voters.
The City of Cape Town would have two wards with the longest ballot papers in the province.
This will give registered voters in the two wards a wide choice to choose councillors who will represent them for the next five years.
“These two, wards 38 in the City of Cape Town in Nyanga, and ward 40 in Gugulethu, each of those particular wards have 39 candidates, be it independents or candidates nominated by political parties.
“Those will be the longest ballot papers in the City of Cape Town,” Hendrickse said.
The Western Cape, which has 30 municipalities, will have 406 wards after they were increased by one each in Mossel Bay, George and Stellenbosch, due to demarcation of municipal boundaries.
It will have a total of 926 seats drawn from the metro, 24 local municipalities and five district municipalities.
On the election day, there will be contestation for 381 proportional representation seats, 406 ward seats in local and metro councils, as well as 57 PR seats in district councils.
A further 82 seats will be filled in district municipalities after local councils make appointments in order to have representation in district councils.
Political Bureau