10,000 Newcastillians may be ineligible to vote next year

As many as 10,000 Newcastillians may be ineligible to vote in 2019, depending on a court judgement.

The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) Regional Manager, Nonhlanhla Mbonane confirmed the rumoured statistics were true and explained the current situation.

“Basically, these are people who applied for registration at a voting station but insufficient address information was collected. We need a house number for areas with formal addresses and descriptive addresses where no formal address has been allocated.”

Mbonane said during the data capturing process, some residential addresses supplied by prospective voters were noted as incomplete or
missing.

This was often the case with older applications.

Improving the capturing process

Through a series of projects with local stakeholders, voter registration weekends and online programmes since the 2016 Municipal Elections, Mbonane said the IEC had done all it could to correctly capture the details of these 10,000-odd residents.

In fact, this number has been reduced from approximately 29,000 in 2016.

“Our current programme is to have the ward councillors look for these residents. The numbers are not necessarily a true reflection however, because that figure was as of August 2018 and a lot has been done between the months September to November and we are hopeful the efforts made in these months will yield results.”

Admitting Newcastle had a large number of voters with incorrect or missing details, Mbonane said the challenge was that these details
could not be removed from the system.

As such, it was difficult to say if these voters had relocated or never voted.

Another problem the IEC faces is in informal areas such as Blaauwbosch, with legislation stating a voter’s address must place them at a specific location.

“We hope voters will come forward because of the [2019] General Elections. They should be able to update their addresses and we can capture their details.”

Political interference

Speaking on stirrings of political wangling and interference, Mbonane said there were no instances of so-called bussing reported or discovered in the Newcastle area.

Bussing is a tactic of transporting in voters from other areas to dilute vote tallies.

Mbonane said the IEC’s mechanisms are in place to prevent any distorting of vote counting and said any such tactic would be picked up before a vote is ever cast.

In addition, political parties are given an opportunity to check the voters roll and submit their objections before proclamation, which is the finalisation of the voters roll.

This will then allow the IEC to intervene.

Handing out of gifts to voters to encourage their loyalty is, according to Mbonane, not prohibited by legislation, however the election
process is governed by a strict Code of Conduct.

“You can’t, for example, say a person will lose services if they don’t vote for you, or threaten or intimidate them.”

Mbonane explained instances which contravene the code of conduct, which is signed by all eligible parties, can be escalated to the Electoral
Court of South Africa, where punishment can include a fine or imprisonment.