IEC 'on schedule' for elections
Vivian Warby
29 January 2009
South Africa's Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) says it will be ready to hold the country's 2009 general elections by 15 April.
"The IEC was working toward a 15 April deadline. However, the date of the elections is for the President to make, in consultation with the IEC," IEC chairperson Brigalia Bam told Parliament's portfolio committee on home affairs on Tuesday.
"On the 15th, we will be able to open all polling stations and start the voting process," Bam said. "That is the deadline we are working towards. We have a very strict timetable."
Bam said the 2009 elections would be similar to the 1994 elections - exciting but also challenging.
"Many people are coming to observe and see if we are going to have credible elections in 2009," Bam added, saying the IEC had various systems in place to ensure the credibility of the elections, including a system in which votes were scanned so that they could if necessary be tracked electronically at a later stage.
Results operations centres would allow political parties to monitor incoming results in an open and transparent manner, and political party access to results information for analysis would be improved. Parties would also have access to the voters' roll.
Bam said that 151 political parties had registered for the elections by November last year.
Voter registration had gone exceptionally well, and so far there were over 21-million South Africans registered to vote. The IEC's target is to get 22-million registered voters for the 2009 elections.
In 1994, when South Africa held its first democratic elections, there was no voters' roll and only 10 000 voting stations. This year, there will be 19 713 voting districts.
The second round of voter registration takes place from 7-8 February. There will be about 60 000 trained registration officials on duty over the registration weekend.
IEC chief executive Pansy Tlakula said the IEC had engaged in voter education at schools and universities in order to address the under-representation of young people on the voters' roll.
Tlakula said South Africa's most active voter age group sector was people between 30 and 69 years old.
Source: BuaNews
