IEC says forgery of election signatures will be dealt with by Congress
TThe South African Electoral Commission (IEC) has left it up to parliament and affected individuals to deal with forgeries that occur during the collection of signatures and identification documents by political parties and independent candidates running for the May 29 general election. announced. first time.
The IEC requires these parties to collect at least 15,000 signatures, and independent candidates must collect 1,000 signatures.
In terms of the Electoral Amendment Act 2023, the IEC requires all political parties participating in the 2024 general elections to register 15,000 party members and supporters on the IEC portal.
However, election authorities have no way to verify whether signatures given by political parties or independent candidates belong to the ID numbers submitted.
IEC Deputy Chief Electoral Officer for Public Affairs Mawetu Mosely said: email and guardian On the sidelines of a press conference on Tuesday, the commission said it had accepted submissions from political parties and independent candidates without question.
He added that after the commission accepted the document, it placed it in the public domain so that people could raise objections.
When asked about the scenario of an individual realizing that their signature has been forged only after the election, and whether this might be a cause for concern about the integrity of the vote, Mozaly said it would rather be about the integrity of the person elected. He said it has something to do with it. Based on fabrication.
“Then it will be up to Congress to deal with that person. Seven days after the election, we will submit the election results to Congress. Once we do that, it is no longer within our mandate. Not within,” he said.
“If we discover that someone was elected using your name and signature fraudulently, we will have to deal with Congress.”
Asked whether this would open the door to litigation, Moserly said the IEC was not trying to pre-empt what might happen and that an investigation would be necessary.
IEC Deputy Elections Officer Masego Chebre told the media that the commission could not verify whether the signatures belonged to the correct voters because it did not have a database of signatures.
“All it does is check whether the number of signatures obtained supports the number of signatures required for the candidate to qualify,” Chevri said.
He added that there was also a grace period in which interested parties could inspect supporting documents and signatures and raise objections if they wished.