THE Electoral Commission of South Africa has recorded more than 140 000 registrations, 14.3% of them youth, in the Western Cape over the weekend, provincial electoral officer Michael Hendrickse said on Monday.
“I am pleased to announce that, as at this morning, we have recorded 143 785 registration activities over the weekend.
“This reflects registrations at the registration stations and online registrations, and includes voters who registered for the first time or who have moved,” Hendrickse said.
The weekend statistics showed that 14.3% of first-time voters, aged between 18 and 21 years, registered to vote on November 1.
“We are pleased that 20 564 of our youth in the province, between the ages of 18 and-21 years old, also took the opportunity to register or update their details over the weekend, either at our voting stations or online.”
Hendrickse said citizens were reminded that the online registration on the IEC website would continue on Monday for those who wanted to make use of the opportunity.
All the province’s 1 577 registration venues were operational in order for voters to register at their voting stations, update their address details if they had changed residence and inspect the voters roll.
Only five temporary registration centres that used tents were affected by bad weather but those were stabilised and did not hamper operational plans.
He said arrangements were made so that the Cape Peninsula University of Technology students could register when the original registration venue at the University of the Western Cape was not available.
There was an isolated incident involving a service delivery protest in Malmesbury on Saturday.
“With the assistance of the SAPS and the community, registrations continued on Saturday and Sunday.”
However, Hendrickse said, due to a huge demand, a decision was taken to operate the voter management devices (VDMs) offline at the Western Cape stations.
“This was prompted by the map functionality which is shared by all VMDs across the country and the online voter portal causing a strain on the system.
“The information of the voters was, however, captured on the VMDs and updated to the IEC server later.”
Hendrickse said the candidate nomination opened on Monday for parties and independent candidates to submit their nominations.
The candidate registration will close on Tuesday at 5pm.
“The scrutiny of these nominations for compliance will then commence and we plan to make the list of contesting parties and candidates available on September 29.”
The IEC election timetable shows that the inspection of the voters roll will take place between Monday and Wednesday.
The voters roll certification and publication will follow on September 26.