New voting rules: Be in home province during upcoming elections – IEC

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) is appealing to voters to be in their home provinces during next year’s general elections if they want to vote on all the three ballot papers to be used.

IEC deputy chief electoral officer: outreach, Mowethu Mosery said any person away from their home voting district, including South Africans based overseas, would only cast their vote on one ballot for the national-to-national ballot, designed for political parties only.

These voters would not be able to vote for the regional to national list and the provincial legislature ballot because those would be available only to voters physically present in their home provinces.

Mosery said three ballot papers would be used in the elections and this had been necessitated by independent candidates who would be contesting the parliamentary elections for the first time.

The first ballot would be the national to national ballot with political parties only, the second would be regional-to-national ballot containing the political parties and the names of independent candidates and the third paper would be for the legislature and would feature independents and political parties.

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Mosery said that, of the 400 seats in parliament, 200 were reserved for political parties and the remaining 200 were to be divided according to regions or provinces that would be represented in the National Assembly.

Mosery stressed that the ballot papers for various regions would not be the same but would differ according the number of political parties and independent candidates contesting in particular regions.

“For instance, the ballot paper of Gauteng will not be the same as that of Limpopo because different parties and independents will contest Limpopo compared to Gauteng,” Mosery added.

“This is why we separated that (regional) ballot…. we do not know which independent will contest which province, but we will only know that once we conclude the candidate nomination.”

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So first it’s the national 200 seats, the national regional 200 seats with its own ballot paper and the third ballot paper is for the provincial legislature.

Voters based in foreign countries would only be able to vote at South African embassies and consulates.

“Citizens overseas won’t get the regional or provincial ballot because they won’t be voting in their provinces,” Mosery said.