Have you ever heard of a proportional representation councillor?
Did you know that one of your ballot papers will be entirely for the election of these councillors?
One of the two ways one can hold a councillor seat in a municipality is by being elected a ward councillor. The other is by being elected through a proportional representation process based on the number of votes your political party receives. A PR councillor is chosen based on this number of votes a political party gets in an election.
So in the upcoming local government elections you will cast your vote on two different ballot papers. One for the ward councillor in your ward (you will see the candidate ward councillor’s name and their party on the ballot) and the other paper will have a political party’s logo and name.
It is the second ballot that will determine the representation a political party will have in your municipality.
Kate Lorimer, the Constituency Head for the DA in Joburg’s North Western wards explained a PR ballot is one where you vote for a political party and not a person like with the other ballot.
All PR votes for a political party will then be allocated proportionally. This means that if party X gets 10 percent of all the PR votes cast in a municipality, party X will hold 10 percent of the 135 PR seats in the City of Johannesburg.
There are a total of 270 seats in the City and the PR councillors will make up half of them while ward councillors make up the other half.
“PR councillors would either be shadow ward councillors or they will sit on council committees. They have the same access to council as a ward councillor,” Lorimer explained.
Quick fact:
Herman Mashaba, the DA’s mayoral candidate for the City is the first person on the DA’s PR candidate list. Parks Tau, the ANC’s mayoral candidate for the City is also the ANC’s first PR candidate.
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