A total of 2 767 139 citizens visited their voting stations on 10 and 11 March to either register as new voters or to update their registrations, making this one of the busiest voter registration weekends in recent years, the Electoral Commission said in a statement.
Of the 2,76 million voters who visited their voting stations this weekend …
• 1 390 861 used the opportunity to re-register in their current voting district;
• 885 758 used the opportunity to change their registration to a new voting district; and
• 490 520 were voters registering for the first time.
Of the new voters registrations, over 400 000 (or 82 per cent) were under the age of 30 and approximately 54 per cent were women.
The province of Gauteng saw the most new registrations at 23,69 per cent, followed by KwaZulu-Natal with 18,78 per cent and the Limpopo with 17,03 per cent.
The voters’ roll now stands at 26 250 939 voters, which is estimated to be approximately 75 per cent of the eligible voting population based on Statistics South Africa’s voting age population estimates.
With the results of the registration weekend factored, the Eastern Cape is the province with the highest level of registration at 87 per cent followed by the Free State at 82,2 per cent and KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Northern Cape at 79 per cent each. Despite the high number of new voter registrations over the past weekend, Gauteng has the lowest overall registration at 67,3 per cent.
The weekend also saw a large spike in online activity, with over 50 000 registered voters using the website and App to check and update their address details. Since the online facility was introduced last year, over 100 000 voters have used it to check and update their details.
The online facility at www.elections.org.za and our App remain available 24 hours a day for registered voters to check and update their address details. The average duration spent online or on the app is just less than six minutes.
It is estimated that approximately 300 000 people who visited voting stations are among the 2,8 million voters for whom the Electoral Commission did not have an address going into the weekend. The completed registration forms will now be scanned and all demographic and address details captured over the coming weeks to determine the final impact on this aspect of the voters’ roll.
In terms of a provincial breakdown of the registration activity, the most populated provinces predictably had the highest participation with KwaZulu-Natal recording 558 728 interactions with voters (20,19 per cent) followed by Gauteng with 517 703 (18,71 per cent) and the Eastern Cape with 460 168 (16,63 per cent).
Weekend registration activity at voting stations saw participation double on Sunday with 1,8 million recorded interactions compared to about 955 000 on Saturday. This is in line with previous trends during registration weekends.
The Electoral Commission would like to express its deepest gratitude to all those who assisted in making the weekend “a success”.
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