EDITOR – I would be interested to hear comments on the following from prospective councillors and the parties they represent.
Now that the courts have ruled that the voters rolls are not valid unless street addresses are published, it is my belief that we have all been fooled in the past that our elections have been free and fair – how could the IEC not have had these addresses?
I checked my own details at the Athlone Park library. I was not able to perform a proper statistical analysis on the voters roll on display there, but I estimate that 70% of listed voters did not have addresses alongside their names (including myself).
When I asked the IEC official what I should do about my address, he suggested that I re-register, but it did not seem to matter much – it was not a requirement. I also asked what would happen if I did not re-register, and his response was that my name would ‘eventually’ be removed.
I now have a number of concerns: If (as reported by the IEC on Monday) only about one million voters turned up to check or re-register, the national voters roll will be seriously flawed, with (say) 60% of already registered voters having no addresses, and these may or may not, it seems be removed by the time we vote.
I was not required to present any proof of residence. This seems wrong. In theory I could go to any district and place my name and a fictitious address on the voters roll. It may be illegal, but who is going to catch me? This is how the ‘bussing-in’ of voters to districts where a particular party is under-represented could easily become a strategy. I believe that there is a high probability that it has already happened in the past.
The biggest by far of my concerns is that there are some nine million eligible voters out there who may not register, and more who may not vote. The TV news interviews that I watched during the weekend indicate that many of our eligible citizens are ignorant of their right and duty to vote. It seems that in a democracy such as ours, dissatisfaction is not addressed by exercising one’s vote – it is much better to burn and pillage and punish the entire country for the ills of our government.
I think we should delay the municipal elections until we have a complete voters roll with far less than nine million absent voters, and until everyone on the list has a valid and verified address.
Long live democracy; but let us get it right, folks.
FRED TURCK
Athlone Park
