Publications
Partners
The local government elections will go ahead on August 3 this year.
The Constitutional Court has ruled that even though the Independent Electoral Commission’s actions regarding the voters’ roll were unconstitutional, it would be given 18-months to clear up the defects.
Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng delivered a majority judgment this morning.
Today’s ruling came after the Constitutional Court reserved judgment on May 9 in the dispute over the necessity of voters’ home addresses appearing on the voters’ roll.
The IEC approached the Constitutional Court urgently regarding the decision of the Electoral Court that it must provide the addresses of registered voters in elections.
The IEC argued that the implication would be that millions of people would be unable to vote in the municipal elections on August 3.
City Press had reported how information about the home addresses of two-thirds of voters in South Africa’s registered voters were completely or partially missing.
READ: IEC will need 4 years if it loses voters' roll case
The woes of the IEC began last year on November 30 when the Constitutional Court ruled that the Tlokwe by-elections of 2013 were not free and fair.
The court ruled all new voters who registered would have to supply details of their addresses, or sufficient details about where they lived in order to place them in an electoral district.
The by-elections were scheduled to take place in February this year but were postponed following a ruling by the Electoral Court when six independent candidates filed an urgent application to prevent the by-elections from happening.
They claimed that the IEC had failed to guarantee free and fair elections because they had been provided with an incomplete voters’ roll – more than 4198 addresses were missing from new voters.
READ: IEC heads to ConCourt
Consequently, several other elections were postponed because of this.
