The Independent Electoral Commission, IEC, said it is all systems go for this weekend voter registration process.
This will be the first of the envisaged two weekends that the commission hopes to conduct ahead of next year’s national and provincial elections.
The IEC highlighted that the voters’ roll currently stands at 26.2 million, representing 66 percent of the estimated voting age population.
“Today, the Electoral Commission declared its readiness to conduct a general registration weekend as part of preparations for the 2024 National and Provincial Elections.
Opening of all registration stations this weekend provides equal opportunity to all South Africans to access the voter registration process.
Registration weekends as a modality of registration provides us by far the greatest registration yield in comparison with other methods,” said IEC Chief Electoral Officer, Sy Mamabolo, during a media briefing in Centurion about their readiness.
Mamabolo said the commission is ready to welcome eligible citizens at 23 296 registration stations across the country.
About 69 718 staff members have been recruited and trained for this registration weekend, and 50 213 of the total staff complement are unemployed people.
He warned that a priority committee has been established within the auspices of National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure (NATJOINTS), to avoid any disruptions at registration stations.
“The responsibility of that committee is to look at the security of the electoral process from the beginning to end.
Plans have been done and agreed at that level.
It is our expectation as the commission that the plans that have been agreed with the security establishment will be such that there are no disruptions,” cautioned Mamabolo.
The commission is also working with telecoms companies to ensure that the infrastructure required to make the process is seamless and effective.
The disruption will however not affect the operations.
“The voter management devices (VMD) will then operate in an offline mode.
When you’re offline it doesn’t mean we seize operations, we only mean that there are no active transmissions of transactions at that time,” explained Mamabolo.
The IEC held a dry run of the voter registration weekend on 28 and 29 October, where according to Mamabolo, important lessons were learnt and infrastructure.
“Some of the issues that emerged was the transfer of transactions into the database, optimisations have now been done and that process is resolved.
There was an issue with our metro line between us and Telkom but again it was an infrastructure router that had to be replaced,” said Mamabolo.
The commission said its VMD’s will also be fully charged during this weekend in case there’s load shedding at their registration stations.
“We won’t be so reliant on the day on energy supply, because the VMD will be pre-charged, and in a full battery charge, they should be able to carry the day without necessity for energy connections,” emphasised Mamabolo.
There will be a registration weekend at the embassies on the date which the commission will announce, to give citizens abroad an opportunity to enlist on the voters roll and record their votes when the opportunity comes.
