About 16.3 million people voted, 59% of the 27.8 million registered voters, but less than 40% of the eligible voting population in the 2024 election. (Photo by Gallo Images/Misha Jordaan)

Glitches and slow queues need to be seen in light of IEC’s budget cuts, writes Nathan Geffen.

Most adult South Africans didn’t vote last Wednesday. There are likely many reasons for this, but if we don’t fix it, our constitutional democracy will become increasingly imperilled. Populist, anti-democratic parties, especially MKP, benefited the most from the low turnout.

So, what proportion of adult South Africans actually voted? 

Estimating the population over 18 in South Africa isn’t easy. The 2022 census was poorly conducted, so I have used the Thembisa HIV model numbers; they are meticulously estimated. According to Thembisa, there are nearly 43 million South Africans over 18. Let’s be conservative and round that down to 42 million. About 16.3 million people voted, 59% of the 27.8 million registered voters, but less than 40% of the eligible voting population.

This was the lowest percentage turnout in national elections since South Africa became democratic. You have to go back to 2004 to find a national election in which fewer people voted, but there were 13 million fewer adults then.

There are probably many reasons for the decline in the number of people voting, but what unequivocally needs to be addressed before the next election is the voting process itself.

Voting shambles 

In 1994, the long queues were symbolic of South Africans’ commitment to democracy. In 2024, the long queues are no longer inspiring; they symbolise incompetence. Videos of people standing in snaking queues after 21:00 indicate something went terribly wrong. Voting should take half an hour at the very most. On Thursday, it rained in Cape Town. If the rain had come a day earlier fewer people would have bothered queuing and the election results could have been very different. Weather should not affect the broad results of elections.

I’m most familiar with the venue where I voted, so I’ll describe the shambles. I got there at 06:45. I doubt there were more than 200 people in front of me. I voted well over four hours later. The queue would move a little, then stop for half an hour or so, and this happened several times. I can only think this was caused by glitches in the voter management devices, a technology which simply seemed unnecessary. The IEC official in charge was out of her depth. She barked incoherent orders at voters and staff. Her staff members bad-mouthed her to frustrated voters in line, which provided some distraction. (There are also reports of many IEC officials displaying immense patience, working diligently for long hours and going the extra mile to help voters.)

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Similar scenes occurred across the country.

The IEC is officially responsible for all this but it is too simple to blame the IEC. Last year My Vote Counts warned that the IEC was being underfunded. The IEC had warned Parliament that it was being underfunded.

On Friday, the Budget Justice Coalition wrote scathingly of the way the IEC has been underfunded by Treasury: “National Treasury fails to address how the IEC had received below inflationary budget allocations leading up to this election, amounting to a real cut of approximately 2% each year over the past three years. Worse, since 2018/19, the IEC’s funding has been increased by 2.71% – well below the Consumer Price Index inflation rate over the same period of 4.98%. … Going back to 2018, the cabinet approved budget reductions of R80.6 million in 2018/19, R85.6 million in 2019/20 and R90 million in 2020/21, which included reductions in transfer payments to the Electoral Commission. There are further reductions in budget allocations to the IEC over the medium-term, with a real cut proposed for 2024/2025.”

Make elections three days

With more and better-trained staff and more booths, busy polling stations could have divided their voter lists into more queues based on surname and sped up voting dramatically. Special voting should be strongly encouraged too; pretty much everyone over 50, pregnant women, and people with disabilities should have voted before election day. In fact, simply consider making the election three days, with the last day being a public holiday so that working people can vote.

The regional ballot was also an issue. While it was introduced as a measure to allow independent candidates to stand, it is thoroughly confusing. It likely also slowed down the voting process.

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Not only does the voting process have to be easier, but much more has to be done to get voters registered. More voter registration weekends are needed. Perhaps voter registration events can be linked to social grant collection, opening of bank accounts and ID book collection. Perhaps too there should be incentives to register, such as some free cell phone data. Of course for that the IEC needs a lot more money.

But one must also have some sympathy for the Treasury for the IEC’s funding cuts; South Africa’s fiscus has been ruined by mass corruption since 2009. Ironically the man most responsible for that, Jacob Zuma, has the most to celebrate after Wednesday’s election.

– Nathan Geffen is the editor of GroundUp 

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