THE Electoral Commission welcomes the proclamation of the 2016 municipal elections by the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, David van Rooyen.
The proclamation triggers the official election timetable which the Electoral Commission published in a special Government Gazette.
The timetable spans the next 72 days and lays down the key dates and deadlines for various milestones until election day on 3 August.
The first action of the proclamation is to close the voters’ roll for the election. This means no new applicants may be admitted to the voters’ roll, including additional registrations or re-registrations. The certification of the voters’ roll for the elections took place on 31 May.
Proclamation also triggers the opening of candidate nominations for the elections. Political parties have until 5pm on Thursday, 2 June to submit their list of nominations for ward candidates, proportional representation candidates and district council candidates.
Nominations for independent candidates to contest ward elections must also been submitted by 5pm on Thursday, 2 June.
In a first for Africa, the Electoral Commission has launched an online candidate nomination system through which candidate nominations can be submitted electronically for the leections. A link to system is available on the homepage of the Electoral Commission’s website.
The system is designed to speed up and simplify the process of submitting candidate nomination lists for elections by allowing parties to capture their own information and then submit it electronically via the internet by the deadline.
Among the key benefits of the system are that the parties can capture their own information reducing errors and the time required, real-time verification of eligibility of candidates, electronically-generated acceptance of nomination forms, removing the need to manually complete forms for each candidate, access to a payment gateway to facilitate ease of payment, exporting and importing spreadsheets for each municipality to allow for copy and paste of candidate data that may be in an existing political party database, progress reports for all elections contested by a party and instant confirmation of the list of candidate and wards contested.
As part of the necessary security of the system, it provides for a political party or nominee for an independent candidate to appoint an administrator who will be provided with rights to work on the system. This administrator can then delegate and assign capturing and browsing rights to others.
While the system is primarily designed for political parties with large numbers of candidates, it is also available for use by independent candidates.
In order to stand for election as an independent candidate in a ward, nominees must be a registered voter in the municipality in which they are contesting. They must then submit a completed nomination form, including the signatures of 50 registered voters in the ward they are contesting, a copy of their ID, an A5 colour head and shoulders photograph for the ballot paper and proof of payment of the election deposit of R1 000.
The following are the proposed deposits payable for contesting elections:
· Metropolitan councils: R3 500
· Local municipal councils: R2 000
· District councils: R1 000
· Individual ward candidates: R1 000
The total cost for a political party to contest all municipal councils is R482 000:
· Eight metros – R3 500 = R28 000
· 205 local councils – R2 000 = R410 000
· 44 district councils – R1 000 = R44 000
Deposits are refunded whern at least one candidate is elected to the council. Should political parties or independent candidates opt to submit nominations manually, they may still do so at the local IEC office for the municipality they are contesting during the window period for submissions.
