ActionSA has written to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and given it until 10am tomorrow morning, Monday 4 October 2021, to address the absence of ActionSA’s name on ballot paper designs it has produced for the local government elections.
At sessions held yesterday, the IEC presented final draft ballot papers for wards in Gauteng. The ballot papers provide the names of the ward candidates, the logos of the parties and the abbreviated names of the parties.
ActionSA’s contention arises from the fact that our party does not have an abbreviated name. One of the reasons ‘ActionSA’ was chosen as our name is that it complies with the IEC’s 8-character limit on abbreviated party names, thus, our party’s name could always be always used in full.
In the IEC’s drafted ballot paper, only our logo features – the party’s name does not appear and an empty space has been left in its place. The implication of this is that ActionSA supporters will be limited only to a candidate name and a logo to identify the party on the ballot, while other parties will have the benefit of their name or popularised acronym appearing.
Despite immediately raising this as an objection with the IEC, both during and after the ballot sign-off held yesterday, ActionSA has been informed that the issue will not be addressed.
The Commission cites two reasons for its position. It has confirmed that it relies entirely on the registration documentation for this information and that the ballot paper sign-off was not intended to deal with such issues.
ActionSA contends that free and fair elections are being undermined if the IEC refuses to address an issue that is fundamental to supporters being able to identify the political party of their choice on a ballot paper. It is redundant to hold a session to sign-off on ballot papers and then refuse to address the material objections arising from that process.
There is no provision in law which limits or empowers the IEC to rely solely on a party’s registration documentation solely for the construction of ballot papers – our law remains silent on what information goes into a ballot paper. In the absence of such provisions of legislation, the IEC must act in the interests of free and fair elections and administrative justice. As a matter of fact, ward candidate names are submitted by political parties in local government elections and the faces of party leaders in national and provincial elections – neither of which has anything to do with registration documentation.
ActionSA is concerned by the approach of the IEC and what seems like an effort to validate a decision to not assist in remedying this matter which directly relates to voters being able to locate their political party of choice.
The IEC has, previously, commissioned a study by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), which has stressed the need to make party selection easier for voters and the important of identifiers like names. This study was used doggedly by the Commission when it refused to register our logo last year but seems to be treated more lightly when it comes to limiting how identifiable ActionSA is on the ballot paper.
ActionSA is a political party representing the needs of communities across the country, it is not to be reduced to just a logo by the IEC.
In electing to explore a legal course of action, ActionSA’s Senate has expressed reservations about what appears to be a continued pattern of decisions made against the interests of ActionSA and its supporters.
Our brief time as a political party has been beset by issues with the IEC. We have been refused to register as a party and we have been ignored in our concerns about the multi-party democracy fund that the IEC openly advocates for people to exclusively fund parties established in parliament. The exclusion of our candidates from the candidate list published this week has been resolved but not publicised and we must endure an arbitrary refusal to reflect ActionSA equally on the ballot papers.
If the Commission does not resolve the issue by 10am tomorrow, Monday 4 October 2021, ActionSA will direct its legal team to pursue any legal remedy available to our party including our courts of law.
