Electoral Commission on Preparations for Tlokwe By-elections

Preparations for the Tlokwe by-elections

The Electoral Commission has noted the concerns expressed by some independent candidates contesting next week's Tlokwe by-elections regarding the veracity of the voters' roll.

In response, the Electoral Commission today invited the legal representatives of the concerned candidates to an urgent meeting to address their concerns and to explain in greater detail the steps the Electoral Commission has taken following the Constitutional Court ruling to address weaknesses identified by the Court.

In this regard, they were given a progress update on the 10-point plan which the Electoral Commission implemented in Tlokwe following the judgment.

Among the steps taken include:

The Commission sent notices to the 1040 persons who had been identified in its investigation in 2014 to have been incorrectly registered on the segments of the voters' roll for the affected voting districts notifying them of its intention to remove their names from those segments of the voters' roll. Of these, 741 persons were removed from the affected segments, 241 either re-registered themselves in new voting districts or were confirmed as registered in the relevant voting district; 50 were found to have been duplicate entries;

in addition, the Commission compared the remaining addresses furnished by voters whose names appeared on the segments of the voters' roll for the affected voting districts against the National Address Database (NAD) and identified 4 531 persons whose addresses possibly fell outside the voting districts in which they were registered;

After investigating the registration of these 4 531 identified persons, the Commission sent notices to 1 601 persons notifying them of its intention to remove their names from those segments of the voters' roll requesting them to make representations in respect thereof. Of these, 1 599 persons were removed from the affected segments and 2 re-registered;

On 22 December 2015, the Commission provided members of the MPLC with a provisional voters' roll for all the persons whose names appeared on the relevant segments of voters' roll for the affected voting districts, as well as separate lists of the 4 531 persons identified for investigation after the NAD comparison, and the 1040 persons who had been identified in its 2014 investigation. Armed with this information, members of the MPLC were throughout requested to bring the names of those persons who were possibly irregularly registered...