In the first real indicator of possible turnout at the 2021 local government elections, voter registration fell to way below expectations.
In numbers released by the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) on Monday, 1.7-million people registered during the IEC’s voter registration drive this past weekend. This compares with 3-million during the same period in 2016 ahead of the previous municipal elections and 2.4-million in 2019 for the national and provincial polls.
While voter turnout in a local government polls is always lower, only 400,000 this past weekend were new registrations and the rest simply changed addresses.
Chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo acknowledged that voter turnout may be a challenge amid the Covid-19 pandemic, but insisted everything was being done to encourage South Africans to vote. Anyone can apply for a special vote ahead of election day on November 1.
“We want to ensure SA that the voting experience for all South Africans will be safe. We are doing everything possible to ensure that,” Mamabolo said.
So far 25% of the registrations were new voters from 16 to 29 years old, he said. Most of these were from KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and the Eastern Cape and 52% were female.
“The well-entrenched pattern of there being more female participants continues. Most of all the new registrations were female voters.”
He said the IEC’s online registration portal has been a big success as it has already registered almost half a million voters since July, when it was introduced. “Yesterday [Sunday], 121,000 applicants used this digital channel of registration. Our expectation is that the use of the portal will remain on the top end for most of today as people use the remaining hours to register,” Mamabolo said.
The online portal will remain “an anchor mechanism of registration for the future”. The registration process will officially close on Tuesday, Mamabolo announced.
The final list of candidates will be published on September 29, with the candidates getting certificates on October 1, the commission announced.
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