Pretoria – Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) officials will today wrap up their special votes drive with home visits to 22 025 eligible voters who had applied in Limpopo.
A total of 28 488 voters in the province had applied to cast special votes, with 6 068 being voting station applicants and 22 025 being home visit applicants.
IEC Provincial spokesperson, Motsiri Ramafalo, said of the 2 781 voting stations in Limpopo, 1 819 opened their doors for special votes on Monday and Tuesday to allow the 6 068 to cast their special votes.
“Since yesterday, we started visiting all the 22 025 voters at their respective homes and in order to achieve this goal, we recruited 10 465 Electoral officials to embark on the home visit process,” he said.
Ramafalo said Limpopo has registered 2.34 million voters on the segment of the national common Voters roll.
Regarding the provincial office’s readiness for Election Day, he said communication which included cell phone network coverage challenges at voting stations had all been attended to.
“All electoral materials consisting of 8.2 million provincial ballots, 4 751 voting booths, 8 869 Ballot boxes, 1000 pieces of cardboard furniture have all been delivered to all 25 local offices of the IEC with satisfactory security conditions.
“These include security materials and Braille template for voters for visually impaired voters. Keys and access to all our voting stations have been secured,” he said.
He said all the 21 political parties contesting the elections in the province have been fully briefed about the state of readiness and their agents have also been trained.
The African National Congress (ANC) has the most candidates at 1 186 followed closely by COPE with 1008 candidates.
Political parties with the least candidates are Future Democratic Party and the Independent Residents Association at eight candidates each.
Ramafalo said all the 25 342 Electoral staff officials have been trained on their roles and responsibilities and IEC staff have been trained on the Results system.
He further said additional data captures, scanner operators and independent Auditors have been recruited.
Depending on the size of the voting station, Ramafalo said the minimum recruited electoral staffing is 6 and maximum is 13.
On Election Day, all stations across the country will open at 7am and close at 7pm. – Nthambeleni Gabara, BuaNews
