Dismal voter turnout doesn’t reduce legitimacy of polls, was to be expected

Though the dismal voter turnout and glitches related to the use of electronic voter identification verification systems emerged as the biggest talking points of the 2021 local government elections, experts believe things went just as expected.

They say the hiccups were to be expected, with growing voter apathy having signalled the former, while a testing election environment signalled the latter.

Criticism

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has come under immense criticism with regards to glitches related to its new voter management technology, that resulted in thousands of people not being able to vote, in what some say amounted to voter exclusion.

Election day was characterised by reports of complaints that some people were being turned away from their voting stations as they did not appear on the voters’ roll.

DA leader John Steenhuisen has called for an inquiry into the IEC’s use of supposedly faulty voter management devices (VMDs), claiming that the issue left many voters disenfranchised. 

According to IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo, of the 238,403 registered voters whose details were not uploaded onto the electoral system, 129,615 later managed to vote after eventually being captured on the database. It is unclear what happened to the remaining 108,788.

Also Read: 2021 local elections: IEC expects 90% of results to be complete on Tuesday evening

Those turned away were reportedly among the more than 1.7 million people registered in September. 

Not only do experts believe the criticism against the IEC is unwarranted considering their mammoth task to organise an election under tight time constraints and trying times, but they’ve also warned against casting aspersions on the legitimacy of the elections.

Much about nothing

University of Johannesburg professor of politics Siphamandla Zondi warned against casting aspersion on the elections without facts, saying the number of complaints about glitches were the same or even fewer than during previous elections, when manual systems were used.

“The issue is a concern when it is higher than the norm. In this particular case glitches related to devices being off-line, people not properly registered being picked up, it is a nature of technology. It gives you what you give it. I had people in my area who were turned back and admitted they were registered in another station, and thought they could vote here,” he said.

Also Read: Mashaba slams IEC but happy with ActionSA’s progress so far

Zondi said it was important to differentiate between the mistake of a voter and that of the IEC, saying this could only be determined once all complaints had been formally lodged by party agents.

He said this is why there are party agents in all voting stations, to sift between those complaints related to mistakes on the IEC’s side and those related to voters’ mistakes.

“…until reported formally, it is a perception of glitches or they were not properly reported, or party agents are not doing their duties. Let us be careful to cast aspersions on the IEC. That undermines the entire SA democracy, because we might say something and it is picked up internationally and it turns out we were wrong.”

Siphamandla Zondi

University of Johannesburg Department of Public Law Professor Hennie Strydom said a party intending to challenge the integrity of the elections in court will have to lay down facts to determine their prospects of success.

“That assessment can only be made based on facts. They will have to make a factual basis for that and then discuss with their legal counsel which legal principles are the best to use and the strategy to follow for court. That is a normal assessment by any litigant who wants to take a matter to court,” he said.

Dismal voter turnout

In 2016, voter turnout slightly improved from 57.6% in 2011 to at least 58%, but this dropped by a staggering 12% to 46% in this year’s elections

According to IEC’s figures, only 12.1 million of the 26 million registered voters cast their ballots.

But political analysts say those who held back their vote were not just inactive but active participants, as this trend continues to weaken the ruling party’s grip on power and signals heightened coalitions politics in local government.

Zondi said the IEC itself had anticipated low voter turnout because of the limited time they had to get voters in, saying it was an unusual and awkward year.

“It was a year of big protests, the looting in July and the moment of disillusionment. Disillusionment tend to make people not turning up to vote but overtime we expected that this would be a trend. If you look at established democracies in the world, when they have 30% turnout they celebrate. It seems that it is just a trend that as you mature as a democracy, less people participate,” Zondi said.

Also Read: Local election results and voter statistics: 2021 versus 2016

He said also there may be issues with tensions in the ANC that would have discouraged some proponents of the ANC from going out to vote, noting issues of trust, public institutions and democracy which is 27 years old but has produced little for the people at the bottom of society.

“When democracy does not produce development, it tends to discredit itself but the specifics of this case we will only known once the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) has released its data on why people voted and why people did not vote,” Zondi added.

“I think many people are disgruntled by our democracy. They had expectations about democracy and at the moment the socio-economic conditions are deteriorating,” he said.

Duvenhage said as much as it was misguided to argue that if voting would lead to instant wealth or significantly improved socio-economic conditions, this is unfortunately how the majority of people tend to think.

“That is a wrong perspective about democracy, but many people are thinking that way about democracy and at the moment there is not a lot in it for them to be democratic, therefore they are staying away. I think we need a big cultural change in our political orientation in order to mature our democracy,” he said.

Duvenage also agreed that some logistical and technical problems were to be expected, but said the IEC performed exceptionally well under the circumstances.

“We can in a way be positive about what the IEC, despite the challenges, achieved. I do not think there is evidence to say this was not a free and fair election. In the African context, is was exceptionally good. In the Western context, about an 80, I would say, due to the glitches,” he added.

– siphom@citizen.co.za