WALLIS AJ closer to home. Instead of having to deal with an amorphous political party, citizens in a municipality have a local representative, who should be available to them, irrespective of political affiliation, to address their local problems. These may appear trivial in the greater political debate, but in a country where service delivery protests frequently feature in our news bulletins and newspapers, they are of central importance to the majority of ordinary citizens. If people lack, or have inadequate, water, electricity, housing and sewage removal, or have roads with potholes and without sidewalks, it is to the municipality that they turn and to their councillors that they have resort. The process of election to public office of councillors is therefore of cardinal importance for the healthy operation of our democracy at local government level. [63] That process is particularly vulnerable to manipulation. If voters can be brought from outside, into a ward where the political balance is unclear, their votes may influence the outcome of the election at a ward level and even the outcome of an entire municipal election. We cannot shut our eyes to the reality that there are municipalities that are finely balanced electorally, where the result in a single ward may affect the balance of power in the municipality. That being so, it is right that particular attention is paid by the IEC to securing that, where there are elections and by-elections in wards, the people who are registered as voters and permitted to vote should be limited to those who are legitimately entitled to vote in that ward. [64] For that reason section 8(3) of the Electoral Act requires the chief electoral officer when registering a voter on the voters’ roll to register that voter in the voting district in which they are ordinarily resident.56 That ensures that, when the segment of the national voters’ roll to be used in the conduct of an election or a by-election in a 56 This is reinforced by regulation 11 (see above n 42). The regulation reads: “When registering a person in terms of section 8(1) of the Act or when recording a change of ordinary place of residence in terms of section 9(3) of the Act, or when changing the registration details in terms of section 11(1) of the Act, the chief electoral officer must ensure that the voter concerned is registered in the voting district in which he or she is ordinarily resident at that time.” 34