The Electoral Commission today launched the first
phase of an online address capture facility where registered voters can provide
their address details via the IEC’s website.
The facility is only for already registered voters
to provide and update their address details and is not an online registration
facility.
In this initial phase the online facility will also
only be available to the approximately 3 million registered voters for whom no
address is currently on the voters’ roll. The affected voters are being
contacted and requested to submit their addresses online via a targeted SMS
campaign.
It is planned to open the system to all registered
voters to check and update their address details in later phases of the
campaign which will also include additional opportunities for voters to provide
their address details – including those without access to the internet.
The initiative forms part of on-going efforts to
enhance and update the voters’ roll with the address details of all voters
where available following the ruling of the Constitutional Court in June 2016.
In a widely publicised ruling, the Constitutional
Court gave the Electoral Commission until June 2018 to rectify deficiencies on
the national common voters’ roll with regards to missing addresses.
In March 2016 approximately 7.85 million (32%) of
the 26 million registered voters had no address details on the voters’ roll and
an estimated 8.6 million (34%) of addresses were incomplete.
Through a variety of initiatives this has been
significantly and systematically improved:
The
proportion of complete addresses increased from 32% of registered voters to over
72% of registered voters
The
proportion of incomplete addresses has decreased from 34% to 14%
The
percentage of registered voters without a recorded address on the voters’ roll
has been reduced from 32% to 12%
Among the measures taken to date include:
Checking
all records and storage to find any registration forms which have address
details which the Electoral Commission may not have captured
Asking
voters to update their address details during the April 2016 voter registration
weekend
Asking
voters without address to please complete an address form on Election Day for
the 2016 Municipal Elections (this initiative generated almost 3 million
addresses)
The
Electoral Commission has focused on obtaining missing addresses for voters during
all by-elections held since July 2016
Today the Electoral Commission began sending out
SMS messages to those voters whose addresses are not on record and for whom it
was able to source a cellphone number requesting them to submit their address
via www.elections.org.za
They will first need to register on the website and
provide a username and password for security purposes.
ISSUED BY THE ELECTORAL
COMMISSION
Ensuring free and fair
elections
Centurion
16 May 2017
For media queries: Please contact Kate Bapela on 082 600
6386
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