The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has announced that it will use next weekend to embark on a major re-registration process for thousands of KwaZulu-Natal voters affected by the demarcation process.
The commission says the demarcation process, which was undertaken early this year, affected 774 voting districts (VD), and after it was completed, 32 more voting districts were created.
KwaZulu-Natal will now have 4,973 voting districts, up from 4,941.
Most of the affected voting districts are found in major urban centres like Durban, Pietermaritzburg, Newcastle, Port Shepstone, Ladysmith, and Stanger, which are historically strongholds of the ANC.
The IEC said that before any general election, it redraws some voting district boundaries in an effort to increase voter access.
Some of the causal factors include the re-demarcation of ward boundaries by the Municipal Demarcation Board and the need for it to align VD boundaries accordingly, an increase in voter numbers in certain VDs due to changes in settlement patterns, and new housing settlements.
“A change of a VD boundary requires that some voters registered in that VD affected by the change need to re-register to ensure they appear on a correct segment of the voters' roll.
“It is a significant process to ensure that the voters vote, and their vote counts in the correct ward where they reside; therefore, their re-registration is an important corrective process.
“TCR (Targeted Communication and Registration) will be conducted by IEC-appointed field workers and will take place from Friday, 20 -23 October 2023 between 8:00am to 17:00pm, the commission announced on Wednesday.
It added that the TCR campaign is in preparation for the provincial and national elections to be held next year.
“The process will have fieldworkers visiting households, distributing pamphlets, and registering voters at their homes within their voting district that are affected.
“Where voters are not found in their homes, a pamphlet will be left advising them to either visit voting stations to re-register during the registration weekend of 18 – 19 November 2023, or to re-register online on the Electoral Commission website.”
IOL Politics