The provincial manager for the elections in the province, Elken Topkin, says out of 5000 people the IEC have expected, only 2000 turned up across all stations in the province. He says despite the low turnout in the numbers of voters, the IEC is quite pleased with the current figures it has from those who previously registered or are eligible to vote in the next upcoming by-elections on 11 November. Topkin says their mission as the IEC in the province is to receive new young voters who have just qualified to vote, but that wasn’t to be.

The IEC is set to hold eight by-elections across municipalities in the province, and amongst these municipalities, two have had their councils dissolved.

I think the lockdown had an impact here, remember some of our young stars who now turned 16-years-old and applied for the ID documents at Home Affairs, have not received their IDs because they have not been delivered to them or they have not even collected them because there are stringent measure in place in terms of the collection. We only moved to alert level 1 about two weeks ago, so the young still need to collect these IDs,” he adds.

The two municipalities which had their councils dissolved are Phokwane Local Municipality, which includes Hartswater, and Renosterberg Local Municipality, which includes Philipstown. Topkin says the IEC will conduct the elections in the affected municipalities. He further adds that those who could not register for these upcoming elections can still register or re-register by visiting the IEC offices at the affected municipalities.

“We also have our online [system] limited to voters who are already registered and if they moved from one place to another, they can update their details on www.elections.org.za,” he adds.

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