With the 2024 general elections now over, South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has shifted its focus to include exploring electronic voting or e-voting.
While not entirely new, this conversation recently gained momentum following the country’s experiences in the May general elections.
Voting in the elections was marred by long queues and technical glitches involving voter management technology, especially in the big metros.
Images of thousands of people still standing in queues waiting to vote way after midnight were splashed all over the internet and local television platforms.
Recently, I was invited to participate in a nationwide study on e-voting by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) conducted on behalf of the IEC.
It comes at a time when pundits are looking at improving election management locally and across the African continent.
The study is critical given evidence of a democratic decline marked by mounting voter apathy, low voter registration numbers, and low voter turnouts – especially among young people.
The IEC also faces challenges of shrinking budgets.
As one of the study’s participants, these were some of my contributions to the four key areas under discussion.
Challenges of e-voting
Building trust in e-voting remains a challenge despite the presence of political will in South Africa. In 2020, Parliament’s Portfolio Committee for Home Affairs rejected an IEC proposal to pilot the system citing fears of hacking and insufficient budgets.
IEC officials, political parties, and civil society all use social media in election campaigns and voter registration; however, this is not sufficient for the successful implementation of e-voting.
Authorities must create social, political, and economic conditions that are conducive to ensuring digital benefits reach everyone.
30 years into South Africa’s democracy, millions of citizens still cannot access the internet due to inadequate ICT infrastructure and high data costs. The situation is worsening due to high unemployment and perceived widespread government corruption.
While internet usage is high in South Africa compared to many African countries with 45 million active Internet users out of a population of over 60 million, it is still largely confined to urban areas.
Navigating the new three-ballot system still needs to be thoroughly explained through voter education. For the first time, three ballot papers were used in the 2024 general elections to accommodate Independent Candidates, and this confused voters.
Public perceptions of e-voting
A 2023 study by Afrobarometer found that South Africans support elections but doubt their efficacy. It also found that citizens had little trust in the IEC. While they did not fear political intimidation or violence, they expressed mixed views regarding ballot secrecy.
This, coupled with budget cuts and technical glitches experienced by voter management devices in the 2024 elections, does not bode well for e-voting.
The long queues at voting stations way after polling stations closed at 9 pm should be telling.
The IEC also has a lot of work ahead if it wants to introduce e-voting in South Africa. Massive voter education campaigns will have to be launched using various online and offline platforms such as radio, television, newspapers, and various social media platforms.
Partnerships with big tech companies will be needed to foot the bill for these campaigns, however great caution should be taken by the IEC regarding possible interference by service providers.
Pros and cons after implementation of e-voting
Considering e-voting’s potential for fast, unemotional, and accurate vote tallying, experts say the system can easily be configured to cater to multi-lingual situations.
This makes it ideal for South Africa’s multicultural society with diverse languages.
The technology has also been used to conduct university elections successfully in institutions such as the University of South Africa.
While expected initial start-up costs of e-voting may remain a concern, evidence from countries such as Estonia shows that these costs should stabilise over time making the system cheaper for the IEC.
It remains unclear if e-voting can resolve issues of voter apathy, especially among the youth without first addressing concerns about poor service delivery and long-standing corruption. A low voter turnout of 58.64% in the 2024 general elections may indicate that many citizens are feeling unseen and unheard.
Resources needed for e-voting
South Africa is already digitalising some government services including immigration control, passport registration, election registration, and pension payment verification.
Widespread digitalisation of government institutions will benefit the building of trust and confidence in e-voting processes.
However, the lack of a clear and coherent digital strategy to drive transformation remains a problem.
The training of polling workers and IT staff in operating voting machines throughout the voting process remains critical.
The conclusion
There is no perfect voting system.
Imperfections in new technology must be anticipated by policymakers so they can be proactive in dealing with them.
Moreover, technology evolves at a rapid pace, and electoral officials must stay on top of this advancement.
While e-voting is ideal for South Africa, introducing it will not be easy due to factors such as a worsening digital divide, lack of technological skills, and budget cuts.
South Africans remain divided over e-voting because of security concerns.
Given the challenges, it might take years or even multiple elections before fully adopting e-voting in South Africa. However, the appetite for it is there and that is a start.
With no end to budget cuts, it might perhaps be best to introduce it in stages and not completely give up traditional paper-based voting.
Dr Maxwell Maseko is a research associate at the Tayarisha Centre located in the Wits School of Governance. He is also a former news editor at the public broadcaster, SABC.
Given that South Africa is the most unequal country, voting remain its only equalising system. The adoption of e-voting must be processed through this understanding. An understanding that will avoid creating unequal access to voting. Unequal access to voting can emerge once cosmetic policy reforms are allowed to contaminate this system. Therefore, the proposed modernisation of the ballot paper or digit must be subjected into a cosmetic policy reform test. The question must be asked whether e-voting has the potential to conceal voter apathy? The same question must be apportioned to paper voting. If e-voting is more vulnerable to concealing voter apathy than the on station paper voting, then e-voting would have failed cosmetic policy reform. Failing cosmetic policy reform test would mean e-voting is cosmetic and has the potential to conceal voter apathy. Otherwise, passing cosmetic policy reform test would mean digitised voting would unlikely conceal voter apathy. To test this, five variables must be measured- Sourcing of ICT Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, ISP Equal Access, Backup Power Security and Apathy-Empathy Elasticity.
The EIC e-voting policy fairly engage four of these test variables- but miss to evaluate the Apathy-Empathy Elasticity of introducing e-voting. This paper relies on optimisation of five parameters for modelling apathy-empathy elasticity. Targeted five parameters are; ballot paper, electronic ballot, neuro-political framing principles and family institutionalisation, voting culturalisation using family institutionalisation vector. The goal being to assist the electoral custodians to comprehend the system of voting and abstaining. So as to correctly contextualise advances of modernised elections whether through; electronic, internet or mailed voting convenience. Factoring in its discourse the role of neuro circuits of reward, fear, and trust. The core of this position paper is a call for caution. The paper seeks to draw the nation’s attention on a public vote as currently the only equaliser in the Republic of South African. Given South African institutional trust deficit levels and well proven incomparable national disparities, election is the only remaining system that legitimatise RSA as democratic state. So modelling apathy-empathy elasticity can help the nation decide whether digitising ballot paper and ballot box is consistent with the liberty principles of nation’s constitution or not.