The Electoral Commission (IEC) is pleased to report that the vast majority of the country’s 22 263 voting stations are fully operational and assisting eligible voters to register ahead of next year’s national and provincial election.
99.77% of voting stations have been operating normally since opening. While most opened on time, some delayed openings were reported in a small number of voting stations. Among the reasons for delayed opening of stations were double bookings of venues, the late arrival of landlords with keys to locked premises, and the late withdrawal of staff.
In most cases where access to the venue was delayed, election officials used their initiative and operated from the vehicles or in the open, allowing early visitors to register with minimal delay until they could gain access to the venue.
Other incidents reported by election officials were disruptions to temporary infrastructure, two separate vehicle accidents suffered by election officials en route to their voting stations, and a herd of elephants on the road to a voting station at Pont Drift around Mapungubwe near the Botswana border which delayed elections officials reaching the voting station.
On-going registration activities have been affected sporadically in a very limited number of areas by isolated incidents of community protest. These include Sterkspruit in the Eastern Cape, Malamulele in Limpopo, the Joe Morolong municipality in the Northern Cape, Lansdowne Road in the Western Cape, and Bekkersdal in Gauteng.
In all these areas election officials are working closely with security forces, community leaders, political parties and other stakeholders to ensure citizens’ rights to register to vote are not impacted and that voting stations are operational as soon as possible.
Awareness of this weekend’s registration opportunity appears high with the Electoral Commission reporting its highest ever volumes of visitors to its various interactive and information channels. The website (www.elections.org.za) yesterday peaked with over 270 000 visits and by 12pm today a further 138 000 people had visited the site. Yesterday more than 177 000 people SMSed their ID numbers to 32810 to check if they were registered.
New channels of interaction via FaceBook page (IECSouthAfrica) and Twitter account (@IECSouthAfrica) have also proven highly popular. The FaceBook page in particular has grown with over 56 000 people who have “liked” the page in the past week making it the third fastest growing FaceBook page in South Africa. Over 100 000 people have also joined as contacts under Mxit.
The high volumes have placed the website and in particular our Voting Station Finder application under considerable pressure and some visitors have experienced slow response times. The IEC is working hard to increase the capacity of this interface and of the call centre (0800 11 8000) to ensure voters have the information they need.
The Electoral Commission hopes that this awareness and interest translates into a high turnout at voter registration stations this weekend – especially by the youth. As at 31 October 2013, there were 23 139 142 people registered to vote representing 73.6% of the voting age population according to latest census figures. Through its registration efforts, the Electoral Commission hopes to increase registrations to 80% of the voting age population in line with levels of previous elections.
