The 2024 national and provincial elections in South Africa takes place under a slightly revised electoral system, following the Constitutional Courts ruling of 2021 mandating that Parliament must devise a new electoral system, one that accommodates independent candidates. Following a process of consultations, including the establishment of a ministerial advisory committee on the electoral system, Parliament settled on a system that retains the spirit of the electoral system used from 1994 till 2019, at least for the 2024 elections, after which an electoral reform panel established by the Minister of Home Affairs, Aaron Motsoaledi, should advise on a future electoral system.
For 2024, Members of the National Assembly and the nine Provincial Legislatures will still largely be elected on a party-list, compensatory proportional representation system. Political parties will be represented in proportion to their electoral support, with the new Act, simply accommodating independent candidates within the current system. To give effect to this, the 400 seats at the National Assembly are split into two portions. One portion of 200 seats that designates each Province as a region or constituency, with each province/region being allocated a designated number of seats depending on its population size, and a further 200 compensatory seats reserved for political parties to contest.
Each region/province counts as a multi-member constituency. Independent candidates will contest the 200 regional seats alongside political parties, while the other 200 seats will be compensatory and reserved for political parties. This means that the total votes for a party in a region determine the number of seats they hold. An independent candidate can only occupy one seat, even if they contest in multiple regions. In each region political parties will appear on the ballot as a political party and submit a party list (of contestants). Independent candidates will appear as independents on the same ballot paper for the region.
In theory, this would make it appear as if independent candidates are competing against other candidates who are aligned to a political party for the designated number of seats in that region, but in effect independent candidates are competing against political parties. This is anomalous. As is the fact that independent candidates who receive voter support that exceeds that which is required to hold a seat, will forfeit all those additional votes, while political parties accumulate the votes and benefit from additional seats. Based on the highest remainder method, political parties may even benefit from an undeserved extra seat or two. For Provincial legislature seats, the province will remain a single-tier multimember constituency and the simply proportional system continues. Here political party candidates off party lists will compete on the same ballot as an independent candidate vying for a seat in a provincial legislature.
Each voter will thus receive three ballots -instead of the usual two ballots that they received in the past. The third ballot is to accommodate independent candidates that are contesting a seat in the region for one of the 200 regional National Assembly seats. The 2024 election will also see the voters obliged to vote where they are registered. This means that voters who are likely to be outside their voting districts on the 29 May will be denied voting at their present locations unless they give prior notice to the IEC’s Chief Electoral Officer through application of Electoral Act Section 24A. These are significant changes in the system which require the necessary stakeholders – particularly, IEC, political parties, media and CSOs to deepen their efforts in educating the South African electorate of these changes.
The three ballots explained
Following the change in the electoral law, the IEC introduced the use of three ballots for the 2024 elections. This is necessitated by separation of the 400 seats in the National Assembly into 200 compensatory seats and 200 regional seats which will see the inclusion of the independent candidates. Legally, Schedule 1A item 13(1) of the Electoral Amendment Act legitimises the separation of the ballots. As such, the IEC is legally mandated to produce separate ballot papers for each regional election for members to the National Assembly. The graphics below explain the difference among these three ballots:
1. National Compensatory Ballot The national ballot is for the election of the compensatory 200 members of the National Assembly, which is only contested by political parties on a closed list basis. The ballot will be the same for the entire country. This ballot will have the names of the contesting political parties on it. Additionally, each party will have its name, face of party leader, abbreviation of the party, the party logo and the box required to make the mark.
Voters are not compelled to vote for the same party across all the ballot papers.
2. National Regional Ballot:
This ballot is for regional elections of the 200 members of the National Assembly. This ballot will vary from region to region, depending on which parties and independent candidates contest the relevant regional election. Only the names of political parties and independent candidates that have met the requirements to contest each regional election will appear on this ballot. The seats are distributed among the regions based on the number of registered voters in region. Each party will have its name, party leader, logo and abbreviation of party. For the independent candidates, this ballot paper will have the name of the candidate, face of the candidate and the word independent.
3. Provincial Legislature Ballot A provincial ballot will be used to elect the members of the provincial legislature in each province. It contains the names of the political parties and independent candidates that have met the requirements to contest each provincial election and will vary from province to province. Voters can identify their preferred independent candidates or political parties the same way as above.
All these ballot papers must be marked once next to the party or independent that a voter is voting for. According to the IEC, “One ballot paper, one mark” otherwise, if there are multiple marks on the ballot paper, it will be considered a spoiled ballot. Notably, voters are allowed to vote for different contestants on each ballot, which will enable vote splitting. Voters are not compelled to vote for the same party across all the ballot papers. Interestingly, all ballot papers are Universal Braille Template compliant for the blind and partially sighted. This change in the ballot system has consequently led to some confusion among voters, which necessitates extensive voter education so that on 29 May, the IEC does not see many spoiled ballots due to similarities in party logos or identifiers. However, the IEC has indicated, in its voter education drives, that to mitigate confusion, voters can request a fresh ballot up to three times at any voting station. These changes may also prolong voting times and precipitate a few delays if voters spend time searching out their preferred party or independent candidates from amongst a long list of contestants.
Amendment of Section 24A of the Electoral Act 73 of 1998 and its consequences.
Traditionally, voters have been allowed to vote anywhere in the country and would be issued with the one national ballot if they were out of the province they are registered in. Otherwise, two ballot papers would be issued if they were voting anywhere in the province they are registered in. Following several reports of attempts at voting irregularities and allegations of double voting in the 2019 National and Provincial Elections, some political parties expressed concern about the abuse of voting anywhere in the country on the national ballot, or if voting on the province for both the national ballot as well as the provincial ballot as enabled by the so-called Section 24A votes. Furthermore, Section 24A, in some areas, has led to voting stations running out of election materials, particularly ballot papers, due to many voters flooding voting stations.
In part this double voting was enabled by malfunctioning voter management devices and issues on the voters roll, where some voters appeared on the VMD but not the voters roll, and in other instances appeared on the physical voters roll but could not be read on the VMD’s. Some voting stations and electoral officials allowed some of the voters to vote, while others did not, in effect disenfranchising some voters, while erroneously enfranchising some, who may not have been entitled to vote, or vote again. In addition, the quality of the indelible ink was in some instances found to be substandard, and this allowed unscrupulous parties and voters to take a chance to vote twice, and in several instances succeeded. As a result, and to avoid these problems, the IEC approached Parliament to make amendments to section 24A.
Voters need to notify the IEC about their intention to vote outside of their district by midnight on Friday, 17 May
The section now provides that a voter who is unable, on voting day, to cast his or her vote at a voting station where he or she is registered, must apply in advance to the CEO to vote at another voting station. This means that voters who will inevitably be away from their voting districts on election day can give Section 24A notice of their intention to vote at another identified voting station. Moreover, if a voters applied to vote at another voting station and their plans change, they can still vote at their registered voting station on election day. In terms of the timelines, voters need to notify the IEC about their intention to vote outside of their district by midnight on Friday, 17 May. This date is approximately two weeks away from election day and in the interim some voters may unavoidably have to be away from their voting districts. This may see otherwise eligible voters being turned away on voting day as they may be unaware of the amendment of Section24A. This may lead to disenfranchisement. Understandably, these amendments were made in an effort to protect the integrity of the election management and administration system and process. However, logistical, infrastructural and equipment challenges can’t be addressed at the expense of facilitating and extending the franchise as reasonably and widely as possible.
The South African Elections Weekly Briefs are produced through a partnership between The Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa, Media Monitoring Africa and the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. The purpose of the partnership interventions is to strengthen peaceful and inclusive participatory electoral processes in South Africa.
