WALLIS AJ
sophisticated computer programmes that enable them to correlate the contents of the
voters’ roll with other information and enable them to detect errors.50
[54]
But resources of this nature are not freely available to independent candidates
such as the applicants, or ratepayers’ bodies participating in municipal elections, or
smaller political parties seeking to make a political breakthrough. To restrict their
capacity to object to the voters’ roll to a mode of objection suited only to the large and
the well-resourced, would be a substantial check on their ability to participate
meaningfully in elections and their constitutional right to stand as candidates for
public office.
It would be a particularly acute problem at the level of local
government where one finds the majority of such candidates and groupings. That
construction of section 15 would not be in accordance with the spirit, purport and
objects of the Bill of Rights as required by section 39(2). The clear and ample rights
to participate in the political process protected by section 19 of the Bill of Rights
would be unnecessarily constricted by this interpretation.
It follows that the
applicants were not confined to objections under section 15 of the Electoral Act to
pursue their objections to the registration of voters in wards where they were not
entitled to be registered.
Section 65 of the Municipal Electoral Act
[55]
The IEC also contended that insofar as the outcome of the by-elections was
concerned the remedy for the applicants lay in pursuing an objection to the results in
terms of section 65 of the Municipal Electoral Act. The Electoral Court upheld this
contention. In doing so it overlooked the fact, as had the IEC, that section 65(1)(a) is
limited to objections concerning “any aspect of the voting or counting proceedings
provided for in Chapter 5 or Chapter 6” of the Municipal Electoral Act. But these
chapters deal with the mechanics of voting and counting of votes on and after election
50
The formidable electoral capability of political parties is apparent from the decision of this Court in
Democratic Alliance v African National Congress and Another [2015] ZACC 1; 2015 (2) SA 232 (CC); 2015
(3) BCLR 298 (CC), where a text message in relation to a forthcoming election was sent to 1.6 million voters.
30