Elections: South Africa democracy wins
Early indications are that Wednesday’s election day voter turn-out may match or even surpass 66%.
“The commission planned on receiving as many voters. We estimated that the turn-out may be more than 66%.We are happy to report the steady flow, if early indications are anything to go by, we may match or surpass the 66% voter turn-out,” said the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) deputy chief electoral officer Masego Sheburi.
However, he was unable to say how many people had voted by Wednesday afternoon.
While voting went relatively smoothly in the province on Wednesday with no major incidents reported, there were long queues at some voting stations as IEC staff used the voters roll to manually check if voters were registered there after challenges were experienced with the voter management devices (VMDs).
About 3.3 million voters were expected to cast their ballots across the province on Wednesday.
Sheburi said by 7am, 93% of the network of 23 292 voting stations were reported open both physically and online and the remainder that were delayed opened within an hour.
Sheburi blamed the late opening of voting stations to delays in delivery of voting material, delays in escorts by the security and protests in certain communities.
“In most stations, queues had already formed before stations opened. This is testament to the enthusiasm of South Africans to record their political choice,” he said.
Speaking to the Cape Times, provincial electoral officer Michael Hendrickse said that by 8am all voting stations were open, but he confirmed that there were “operational difficulties” with the VMDs at some.
“We told our staff that the important thing was to use a voters roll. If somebody comes, never mind what the VMDs are doing. And if a person is registered at the voting station and their name appears on the voters roll hard copy, they should be issued with ballot papers,” he said.
Sheburi said the VMDs were not a requirement for the voting process, but an additional safeguard.
“It’s a tool to facilitate smooth flow of voters and find people’s names on the voters roll. Where it proves to be more a hindrance than enabler, we put it aside and use the voters roll,” he said.
Hendrickse also said there were problems at some voting stations where they used one ballot box instead of three boxes for the different types of ballot papers. He said protest action did not affect the voting in the province.
“There was some protest in Ocean View, but again it was not about the elections. The SAPS was there and it was calm afterwards,” Hendrickse said.
He said there was calm in Philippi following a protest on Tuesday.
Hendrickse told the “Cape Times” that electoral staff had to turn away people who came to cast their ballots at voting stations they were not registered at.
“There are people coming to voting stations and wanting to vote but never informing us of their intention to not vote in their voting station. People are upset that nobody told them but the fact is that the rule is that you vote where you are registered.”
The IEC had allowed people until May 17 to notify them of their intention to vote at stations other than where they were registered.
The DA’s Grant Twigg said they were happy that the people came out in numbers to cast their ballots but were concerned about the queues.
“We are very concerned with the long lines. The IEC systems seem to be going off a lot.
“We have spoken to the IEC and said that if they have issues with the voter management devices, we must move over to the manual process. That will escalate the lines going faster.
“We have given them the list of voting stations that have long lines and people standing for more than three hours,” Twigg said.
ANC provincial spokesperson Khalid Sayed said his party welcomed what appeared to be a high voter turn-out in the province.
“The turn-out is encouraging and it indicates that the residents of the Western Cape take their civic responsibility highly. We are encouraged,” Sayed said.
GOOD Party secretary-general Brett Herron said the voter turn-out looked good, and the weather helped.
Herron said they were concerned about the long queues at voting stations.
“There are long queues, which is something that worries us. That is because there is one scanning machine for IDs and it is not fast enough and the third ballot paper delays the process.
“It is encouraging that people are not leaving, but staying on to ensure that they cast their votes,” Herron said, adding that it was a lesson to the IEC to speed up its processes.
Cape Times