The Electoral Commission has launched the first phase of an online address capture facility where registered voters can provide their address details via the IEC’s website.
Also read: Download the IEC election Apps here
In a widely publicised ruling, the Constitutional Court gave the Electoral Commission until June 2018 to rectify deficiencies on the national common voters’ roll with regards to missing addresses.
In March 2016, approximately 7.85 million (32 per cent) of the 26 million registered voters had no address details on the voters’ roll and an estimated 8.6 million (34 per cent) of addresses were incomplete.
Also read: What does the IEC do?
“The online address capture facility is only for already registered voters to provide and update their address details and is not an online registration facility,” said the IEC spokesperson Kate Bapela.
Bapela said that in the initial phase, the online facility would only be available to the approximately three-million registered voters who do not have an address on the voters’ roll.
“The affected voters will be contacted and requested to submit their addresses online via a targeted SMS campaign.
“It is planned to open the system to all registered voters to check and update their address details in later phases of the campaign which will also include additional opportunities for voters to provide their address details – including those without access to the internet,” she added.
The initiative forms part of on-going efforts to enhance and update the voters’ roll with the address details of all voters where available following the ruling of the Constitutional Court in June 2016.”
Through a variety of initiatives, Bapela said this had been significantly and systematically improved:
• The proportion of complete addresses increased from 32 per cent of registered voters to over 72 per cent of registered voters.
• The proportion of incomplete addresses has decreased from 34 per cent to 14 per cent.
• The percentage of registered voters without a recorded address on the voters’ roll has been reduced from 32 per cent to 12 per cent.
Among the measures taken to date include:
• Checking all records and storage to find any registration forms which have address details which the Electoral Commission may not have captured.
• Asking voters to update their address details during the April 2016 voter registration weekend.
• Asking voters without address to please complete an address form on Election Day for the 2016 Municipal Elections (this initiative generated almost 3 million addresses).
•The Electoral Commission has focused on obtaining missing addresses for voters during all by-elections held since July 2016.
The Electoral Commission has already began sending out SMS messages to voters whose addresses are not on record, requesting them to submit their address via www.elections.org.za .
They will first need to register on the website and provide a username and password for security purposes.
