{"id":306974,"date":"2019-03-26T07:47:06","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T05:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=306974"},"modified":"2019-03-26T07:47:06","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T05:47:06","slug":"da-given-permission-to-seal-ballot-boxes-in-may-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/306974\/da-given-permission-to-seal-ballot-boxes-in-may-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"DA given permission to seal ballot boxes in May elections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Democratic Alliance has been given permission by the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa to use its own seal on ballot boxes during the upcoming general election.<\/p>\n<p>The <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/mg.co.za\/article\/2019-03-25-da-granted-permission-to-use-its-own-seal-on-may-8-ballot-boxes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mail &amp; Guardian<\/a><\/strong> reports that the seal is intended to help protect the integrity of the results after a number of reports about misplaced ballot boxes in Gauteng surfaced during the 2014 national elections.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, the IEC admitted that the procedure set out to handle the ballot boxes after the votes were counted had not been followed, leading to claims that the province&#8217;s votes were tampered with.<\/p>\n<p>The IEC confirmed that the Electoral Act allows any political party to apply their own seal to a ballot box, with the DA also permitted to break their own seals during the vote-counting process.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elections<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The latest poll by <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/305966\/low-voter-turnout-expected-for-the-2019-elections-this-is-how-the-anc-da-and-eff-could-be-affected\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ipsos<\/a> <\/strong>shows that around 61% of eligible South Africans would put their voice behind the ANC.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, only 16% would go with the DA, and 9% with the EFF.<\/p>\n<p>However, when adjusting for predicted voter turnout (80%) and only counting those who say they will vote, Ipsos\u2019 numbers show that a lower turnout is better for the smaller parties.<\/p>\n<p>Nationally, assuming a medium-sized turnout of voters on 8 May, Ipsos predicts the ANC will still get 61% of the vote, but the DA would jump to 18% and the EFF to 10%.<\/p>\n<p>In the 2014 election, the ANC secured 62.2% of the vote, with the DA getting 22% and EFF just over 6%. While the poll shows the ANC losing out slightly, it\u2019s the DA that is the biggest loser (-4 percentage points) and the EFF the biggest gainer (+4 percentage points).<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/305966\/low-voter-turnout-expected-for-the-2019-elections-this-is-how-the-anc-da-and-eff-could-be-affected\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Low voter turnout expected for the 2019 elections \u2013 this is how the ANC, DA and EFF could be affected<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Democratic Alliance has been given permission by the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa to use its own seal on ballot boxes during the upcoming general election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":306988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1329,26],"class_list":["post-306974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-da","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306974"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306990,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306974\/revisions\/306990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}