Court ruling for IEC to set up more voting stations abroad will be ‘logistically difficult’ - EISA

JOHANNESBURG - The Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA) says the recent Electoral Court order for more voting stations to be set up abroad has made the work of the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) unnecessarily tough in the run-up to elections.

The court gave an order in favour of the Democratic Alliance (DA) on Tuesday for the commission to set up voting stations at all honorary consulates around the world.

This is in addition to the voting stations at official consulates and high commissions.

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This means the IEC will have to deploy staff and allocate resources to 130 honorary consulates worldwide.

In its argument, the IEC detailed the impracticality of setting up voting stations at honorary consulates around the world.

Election analyst Ebrahim Fakir said the courts did not consider its argument carefully.

"It’s going to involve people, security features, flights, having the ballots sealed. It’s going to be logistically difficult, administratively difficult in a management sense and the costs are going to escalate."

Meanwhile, the DA says it has followed up with the IEC to make sure that they are making arrangements with the Department of International Relations Cooperation to ensure that every consulate across the world will be a voting station.