Drop in registered voters, but will turnout continue to rise?

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It remains to be seen whether the steady uptick in voter turnout for local government elections will maintain the upward trajectory seen over the past two decades, given the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Turnout for the municipal elections, which usually by far trails that for national and provincial polls, has still risen steadily since 2000, when only 48.07 registered voters cast their ballots. In those elections, more than 18.4-million people were registered to vote. 

However, for the first time since those elections 21 years ago, the number of registered voters has decreased slightly by about 100 000 people. The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) said that the number of registered voters for the 1 November elections was R26.2-million compared with 26.3-million for the previous local government vote five years ago.

Voter turnout for the 2016 polls was the highest it has ever been, with 58% of the electorate showing up to cast their ballots, a slight uptick from 57.6% five years before. 

The 2006 elections were the last to fail to break the 50% voter turnout mark, with 48.4% of the 21.05-milion registered voters casting their ballots. 

But South Africa, and the world, have been in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has, officially, infected 2.9-million people in the country, and claimed the lives of more than 88 900 people. 

Infection rates have been slowing down significantly leading up to next week’s polls, with the seven-day average of new infections hovering around the 434-person mark. This is exponentially down from the 19 184 seven-day average of new daily infections at the height of the third wave in early July. 

The IEC has released guidelines as to how voting will be conducted with strict protocols to ensure safety, including that anybody showing up without a mask or face cover will be refused entry to vote by the election officials at all voting stations. 

“Bring your own pen for filling in forms and marking and marking ballots at the voting station,” the IEC advised. “In any event, the election officials will be sanitising all pens at the voting station after each use.”

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