Millions of young people have registered to vote in the upcoming elections, the Independent Electoral Commission said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“We are thrilled with the way South Africans, and young South Africans in particular, have come out in their millions to take the opportunity to register,” chairwoman Pansy Tlakula said.<\/p>\n
“The results show that we can lay to rest any suggestion that South Africans are apathetic or blas\u00e9 about democracy.”<\/p>\n
A total of 1,259,560 people registered for the first time over the weekend, taking the number to well over 25 million voters.<\/p>\n
Tlakula said the number was 80.5 percent of the eligible voting population.<\/p>\n
A total of 1.1 million people registered for the first time during the first registration weekend in November. With the 1.2m who registered this weekend a total of 2.3m voters would be added to the roll.<\/p>\n
Almost three million people visited 22,263 voting stations over the weekend.<\/p>\n
“That is 16 percent higher than the 2.5 million who visited voting stations in November,” said Tlakula.<\/p>\n
Last Thursday the IEC said it hoped to improve on the figure of just over 24.1 million South Africans who had registered to vote.<\/p>\n
This was 76.7 percent of the estimated voting age population which, according to Statistics SA, is 31.4 million.<\/p>\n
More on the elections<\/p>\n
IEC targets 25 million voter roll<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n E-tolls not an election issue for ANC: Sanral<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n