VEC 10 window for voting abroad now closed with more than 70 000 South Africans registered to vote
23 April 2024
The VEC 10 window for South Africans to move their registration to vote overseas in 2024 has now closed.
More than 70,000 citizens living, working, studying, or traveling overseas are now registered to vote abroad – doubling from approximately 31,314 in the last national elections in 2019.
Despite the Democratic Alliance (DA) winning a court case to include honorary consuls as voting stations in this election, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has failed to implement this in time for citizens to use the VEC 10 opportunity.
For the hundreds of thousands of South Africans living abroad, this is hugely disappointing, especially for those citizens living in cities like Perth who now face a four-hour flight to the nearest voting station in Australia. Citizens in New Zealand, Canada, and the United States face similar logistical and financial challenges.