Cape Town - The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has confirmed that by April this year they would be logistically prepared to go to the 2009 General Elections.
"The IEC was working toward a 15 April deadline. However, the date of the elections is for the President to make, in consultation with the IEC," said IEC Chairperson Brigalia Bam, while briefing the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs about preparations for this year's General Elections.
"We need to put the logistics in place. On the 15th, we will be able to open all polling stations and start the voting process. That is the deadline we are working towards. We have a very strict timetable," she said on Tuesday at the briefing.
Dr Bam said the 2009 elections will be similar to the 1994 elections, adding that it will be exciting but also challenging.
She said "many people are coming to observe and see if we are going to have credible elections in 2009."
Dr Bam said that political parties would have access to the voters' role and that the IEC also had different systems in place to ensure the credibility of the elections, including a system in which votes are scanned, so that they are able to be tracked electronically at a later stage if needs be.
She said that Results Operations Centres would allow stakeholders the opportunity to monitor incoming results in an open and transparent manner and that political party access to results information for analysis would be improved.
She said that 151 parties had registered by November last year.
Voter registration had gone exceptionally well and so far there were over 21 million people registered to vote. The IEC's target is to get 22 million registered voters for the 2009 elections.
In 1994, when the country had its first democratic elections there was no voters' roll and only 10 000 voting stations. This year, there will be 19 713 voting districts and a voters roll of 21.6 million people (as at 12 November 2008).
The second round of voter registration takes place from 7-8 February. There will be about 60 000 trained registration officials for the registration weekend.
Advocate Pantsy Tlakula, CEO of the IEC, said that to address, in particular, the under-representation of youth on the voters' roll and their low level of participation in electoral democracy, the IEC had engaged in a number of activities, including voter education at schools and higher education institutions.
Adv Tlakula said the most active voter age group sector was people between 30 to 69 years old
