The African National Congress (ANC) is so concerned that it could be voted out of power in the 2024 general election that it is trying to shift to an electronic voting system that would be far more open to manipulation and fraud than the current manual voting method.
To avoid the public outrage this shift could elicit, the ANC is trying to conceal the mooted change among the many technical adjustments in the Electoral Laws Amendment Bill of 2020 (the Bill). This Bill is being pushed through the public consultation process so quickly and so quietly that most South Africans have no inkling of its existence or importance.
Key provisions in the Bill empower the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to introduce ‘a different voting method’ for elections at all three tiers of government. The commission will be able to do this by regulation and without reference to Parliament. In addition, the IEC’s decision will override all legislation providing for the country’s current voting system.
The crucial words are as follows: ‘Despite anything to the contrary contained in this Act or in any other law, the Commission may prescribe a different voting method.’ This wording would empower the IEC to introduce an electronic voting system – an option which the commission has been actively investigating for some time.
In May 2019 deputy IEC chair Janet Love said the commission ‘had been exploring the use of electronic or digital voting systems… “We are working with our colleagues around the world to investigate how we can use this system of voting in our country”’.
In July 2020 IEC chair Glen Mashinini stated that the commission is ‘considering an e-election’. In the same month, the IEC added that it was ‘considering online voting for South Africa’, but was ‘keeping mum about the details’.
According to Ms Love, an electronic voting system would help overcome challenges that emerged in the 2019 general election. These included ‘double voting by some voters’ and ‘removable indelible ink used to mark the thumbs of voters who had already cast their ballots’. However, these problems can easily be resolved in other ways.
Traditional manual voting system are not entirely immune from irregularities. However, international experience confirms that the safeguards they provide are far stronger than those available under electronic systems. In particular, traditional voting systems are far more transparent because they provide a paper trail and can be observed at every stage.
Comments Robert Duigan (who holds an MSc in Crisis and Security Management from Leiden University College) in a paper entitled An introduction to vulnerabilities in electronic voting: ‘For the classic secret ballot to function, there need only be a secret booth, a sealed box, a legible ballot, and an impartial system of oversight for counting. For an electronic system, similar concepts apply (albeit in a virtual sense), but at each stage, the “parts” of the system are far greater in quantity, and the failure of any one part can compromise the validity of a ballot, or even an entire election.’
As Mr Duigan points out, electronic voting systems are vulnerable to ‘overt’ penetrations by actors wanting to ‘discredit an election’; to ‘covert’ penetrations which can be used to ‘intimidate’ voters; and to ‘surreptitious’ penetrations which can be used to ‘secretly defraud an election while establishing its legitimacy’. These last two risks are particularly worrying in South Africa, where the ANC is well aware of how easily it could be voted out of power in 2024 and beyond.
In the 2019 general election, the ANC won its 57.5% majority in the National Assembly with the support of only 10 million people or some 26.5% of all eligible voters. By contrast, roughly 20 million eligible voters chose to stay away and not to vote at all. If a significant proportion of these 20 million people had instead voted for opposition parties, the ANC vote could easily have dropped below 50%.
Since the May 2019 election, disillusionment with the ANC has grown. President Cyril Ramaphosa has failed to deliver on jobs, growth, infrastructure, or real reform. The Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture has cost almost R780m so far, but no telling convictions for corruption have yet been secured.
Callous ANC cadres have profited from the Covid-19 crisis by charging inflated prices for personal protective equipment (PPE) and stealing food parcels intended for the poor. Covid-19 relief has been badly bungled, leaving millions hungry and desperate. The lockdown implemented has been one of the hardest, least effective, and most irrational in the world. The economy – already in grave crisis before the pandemic began – has dropped further into ‘junk’ status, increasing the risk of a sovereign debt default.
All of which explains why the ANC has reason for concern that its electoral support is dropping to below 50%. And why the ruling party is so keen to shift to an electronic voting system that lacks the transparency of the manual method and is far more vulnerable to manipulation and fraud.
As Mr Duigan puts it: ‘Electronic systems are only transparent to a tiny selection of technicians, whose access to voting procedures is controlled by the state…. In South Africa, where the government is openly hostile to checks on its power,… this is grounds enough to reject attempts to digitise future elections.’
Whether South Africa is to make the change to an electronic voting method is a matter of great moment. It is also one which needs proper exploration and debate, so its ramifications can be fully understood. Instead, the ANC is trying to sneak in the change under the cover of a Bill which most South Africans know nothing about.
The Bill was tabled in Parliament by the minister of home affairs on 23rd September, but has mostly been ignored by the media. It has also been overlooked by the Parliamentary Monitoring Group, which is usually quick to alert the public to upcoming bills.
On 11th October 2020 the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs (the committee) published a call for public comment in the Sunday Times, but made no attempt to explain the importance of the Bill. The committee also set 30th October 2020 as the deadline for public comment, even though this was less than three weeks away.
IRR objections have resulted in a last-minute extension of the deadline to 6th November 2020. Hence, the public now has a few more days to comment on the unconstitutionality of the Bill and the public consultation process. Key points to be made include:
- The IEC has a constitutional obligation to ‘ensure’ that all elections are ‘free and fair’. However, it cannot fulfil this obligation under an electronic voting system when the opportunities for the rigging of elections conducted in this manner are legion and are widely known to be so;
- Parliament has the ‘constitutional authority and duty’ (as the Constitutional Court has put it) to design the electoral system, and so cannot lawfully delegate the decision to introduce an electronic voting system to the IEC; and
- The Constitution requires adequate public participation in the legislative process. This means, as the Constitutional Court has ruled, that citizens must be given ‘a meaningful opportunity to be heard’ and that the ‘truncated timeline’ on which the committee is insisting is ‘inherently unreasonable’.
South Africans should have no illusions about the importance of this Bill. If it is adopted in its current form, the IEC – an institution which is clearly vulnerable to cadre deployment and political influence – is likely to use it to introduce an electronic voting system for the 2024 general election (if not for the local government poll in 2021).
The ANC will then take advantage of this electronic system to conceal its diminishing electoral support – and to claim future election victories that the people of South Africa had every intention of denying it.
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