Only 14% of youth 18 to 19 registered to vote

Millions of voters, thousands of voting stations, hundreds of political parties. The logistics of the upcoming local government elections are massive.

Below is a breakdown of the numbers, as released by the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC).

There are currently 24.95 million registered voters

According to the IEC, this is down from the 2014 general elections when there were 25.39 million registered voters. The reason given was that names of people who had died since then had been removed from the voters’ roll.

Of the approximately 9 million eligible voters not currently registered, over 6.2 million are under the age of 30

IEC chief electoral officer Mosotho Moepya on Thursday said for the country’s democracy to continue growing and thriving, young people needed to register and vote in great numbers.

For this reason, the IEC’s advertising campaign would focus on the youth.

There are only about 289 000 (14.45%) registered voters aged 18 and 19 out of an eligible population of approximately 2 million

According to the IEC, 40% of the country’s population (21 million) was born after 1994. The voter registration profile indicated that not enough young voters were registered.

There are 282 political parties registered with the IEC

There was no specific cut-off date for parties wanting to contest the municipal elections and registration was on-going.

The timetable for the nomination of candidates would only be announced when the date of election was announced.

The number of municipalities has been reduced from 278 to 257

The number was reduced after the Municipal Demarcation Board revised the country’s voting districts.

There were eight metropolitan municipalities (unchanged from 2011), 205 local municipalities (266 in 2011) and 44 district municipalities (unchanged from 2011).

There are 4 392 wards

This was a 15% reduction from 2011, according to IEC.

The final batch of ward boundaries was handed to the commission on December 15 last year. It was now in the final stage of reviewing voting station boundaries.

There are currently 22 513 voting stations

The IEC said this number was expected to increase to about 22 600 .

There were 20 859 voting stations in 2011.

There are 1 000 full-time employees at the IEC

According to the IEC, it takes almost 220 000 people to run a smooth election. The commission would make use of temporary staff.

Just under 50 000 temporary staff have been recruited

They would help with the voter registration weekend planned for early March.

Date yet to be announced

Municipal elections take place every five years. The last election was held in 2011.

A date for the elections has not yet been announced and will be proclaimed by Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister David van Rooyen.

In terms of the Constitution, the elections have to take place between May 18 and August 16.

Genevieve Quintal, News24