Final voter registration weekend announced
The IEC will have one final voter registration weekend ahead of the local government elections.
MBOMBELA – The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has urged voters not to miss the second and final registration weekend ahead of the municipal elections.
The date has been set for the weekend of April 9 and 10. Voting stations will be open nationwide for registration from 08:00 to 17:00 on both days.
There was some confusion among already registered voters in Mbombela as to whether and why they should re-register.
Since a vote cast in a municipal election is for the ward in which a voter lives, they must vote in the said ward.
A ward can have a number of voting stations and where a voter lives determines where he or she must vote and therefore where he or she must be registered.
Hence, if one has moved house since one’s previous registration, one should re-register to vote in one’s voting district.
An anonymous voter said she had been living in her house since 1998, but the IEC’s website showed she had to re-register at the same voting station.
“Is it not a waste of time to re-register at a place where you have voted before?” she asked.
IEC Mpumalanga spokesman, Mr Sibusiso Nkosi, explained it was due to a change in voting-district boundaries that she had to re-register.
Demarcations of wards and districts changed between elections, as these are based on the number of registered voters in an area.
The amalgamation of Mbombela and Umjindi local municipalities is further affecting wards, from Barberton to Hazyview.
- Find your voting station.
Nkosi added that nobody gets removed from the voters’ roll and if you do not re-register, you will be required to vote where you are registered.
Some voters said they were informed that they needed to re-register, but upon visiting their station were informed that their details were, in fact, correct.
Another said his details from the IEC showed that he was registered in Alberton North, a place he has never even been to.
Nkosi said he would need to check the complaint using the voter’s ID number, which was not available.
- Visit the IEC’s website.
He added that they hadn’t received many complaints over the weekend but did receive enquiries regarding voting districts.
The only issues occurred in Bushbuckridge where protests over ritual killings resulted in two voting stations to be closed on Saturday. However, these were open on Sunday, according to Nkosi.
Another voter said his only issue had been that one needed to check on the Internet where one was to vote, as the voting stations were not advertised or marked.
“If you did not have access to an Internet search engine, you wouldn’t be able to find your voting station,” he said.
The municipal elections will be held on a date or dates yet to be decided, between May 18 and August 16.
- Find out where you are registered: Send an SMS with your ID number to 32810.
