Voters without addresses not removed from roll - IEC

Pretoria - Allegations that people have been removed from the voters’ roll due to confusion over addresses are an urban legend, the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) said on Tuesday.

No voter would be removed from the roll if they had not yet provided an address, CEO Mosotho Moepya told reporters in Pretoria.

Moepya said the IEC had received a number of inquiries on Sunday from people who said they had been removed from the voters’ roll, after they had received an SMS requesting them to update their addresses.

"The SMS indicates we do not have their address details on record. None of them have been removed. There is no plan to remove them," he said.

Moepya said the IEC was looking for addresses for people registered between 1998 and 2009. He said some of those voters’ details had been lost in the system.

In November 2015, the Constitutional Court ruled that the Tlokwe by-elections of 2013 were not free and fair and that the roll had to contain voters’ addresses, or sufficient details of voters' locations to place them in a voting district.

In February this year, the Electoral Court postponed the Tlokwe by-elections after six independent candidates complained that 4 198 addresses were missing from the new voters’ roll.

The IEC had approached the Constitutional Court to seek clarity on its earlier ruling, including whether the lack of addresses would invalidate the voters’ roll.

This article first appeared on News24 – see here.