If we continue with these systems, we'll be acting 'irresponsibly' - IEC chair's sobering admission
8 July 2019
Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) chairperson Glen Mashinini has admitted that its current voter verification system is so outdated that it would not survive another election – and he hinted that it would be updated before the 2021 local government elections.
"We will speak of pre-2019 elections in South Africa as opposed to post-2019," he told participants at a post-elections review seminar organised by the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA) in Johannesburg on Monday.
"If we go into [another] elections with these systems, we will act irresponsibly, we will plunge the country [into problems]. We must look at what further automations must be brought into the system."
Mashinini admitted that the IEC’s systems had not kept up with the Department of Home Affairs' introduction of smart identity cards in 2013.