Tshwane - The first day of special voting kicked off at a steady pace across the country.
This is according to Electoral Commission CEO Sy Mamabolo who on Saturday said the IEC had approved up to 1.1 million applications for special voting in this year’s local government elections.
Mamabolo said the vast majority of voting stations had opened on time on the first day and that the IEC’s home visit team was deployed as planned.
According to Mamabolo, despite the fact that some tents were blown away owing to bad weather, the IEC has since put contingency measures in place with disaster management teams to restore operations.
“Overnight storms blew away tents in Gauteng, Eastern Cape and North West, but these were either re-installed or replaced in time for the operation of voting stations,” he said.
Video: Kailene Pillay/ IOL Politics
Further outlining his report, Mamabolo indicated that the Commission was unable to open eight voting stations.
“This was in Camperdown, KwaZulu-Natal where community members were unhappy with matters related to traditional leadership.
“Camperdown issue is related to disputes about traditional leadership and communities supporting one of the traditional leaders, where there are disputes on the authentic leaders of that community. So there is mobilisation against the process. Working together with security agencies we should be able to open those voting stations because there are people who applied for special votes and they are entitled to participate. Our contingency plan is to open the stations and have them functioning,” he said.
There were reports that two voting stations in Alexandra were without PPE’s for almost three hours.
“There are enough PPE’s, the IEC has procured for all staff working at voting stations. If the ones in Alexandra did not receive, we will intervene through our network,” Mamabolo said.
Seeing that the elections are taking place after a long weekend and some people have travelled to visit their loved ones outside their areas, Mamabolo encouraged all registered voters to return on time so that they can vote.
“Our call is that if you have travelled, come back to the place where you registered and vote. You will not be able to vote in any other place besides the place of their residents, we are encouraging them to come back on time,” Mamabolo said.
He further said the commission would provide pens at voting stations to avoid the spread of Covid-19, however, people are encouraged to bring their own pens.
Mamabolo said a record 1 110 194 applications for special votes were approved for the elections including 507 354 (49%) home visits and 602 780 (51%) votes to be cast at voting stations.
Special voting takes place today and tomorrow at both voting stations and home visits.
There are 1 174 voting stations where no applications for special votes were received.
These voting stations will therefore not be opening on both days of special votes.
Political Bureau