Johnathan Paoli
THE Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) in the Western Cape has encouraged prisoners to register to vote, in line with the landmark 1999 Constitutional Court ruling, namely the August and Another v Electoral Commission and Others.
The Commission said that the Voter Registration Weekend in South Africa was expected to take place on 3 and 4 February this year.
The provincial electoral head Michael Hendrickse, confirmed that the commission had been on a voter education drive at correctional centres across the province in order to inform inmates of their democratic right to vote.
Registration officers are expected to visit prisons managed by Correctional Services, where inmates can register to vote in the municipality where they resided before incarceration.
Hendrickse said that the commission was also encouraging families of prisoners to ensure they had their identity documents to allow them to meet registration requirements.
“When we register a prisoner, we register them against the address when they are not in prison, in other words where they are ordinarily registered irrespective of where you are held on the assumption that you may come out before election day you will vote like anybody else then,” Hendrickse said.
In addition, the IEC said that South Africans living abroad needed to notify the commission of their intention to vote from outside the country by submitting a VEC 10 form, but that this process was easy and could be done online for convenience.
The commission said that those living abroad required South African citizenship to vote and that citizens with a valid ID either in the form of a green ID book, smartcard, temporary identity certificate, South African passport or temporary passport could vote.
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