 |
| Election street signs. Image: News24 |
Luckily I had an informative walk on the mountain (ah Cape Town...) this afternoon where I learnt the following from my father (primarily), sister and brother-in-law:
- There are 3 elections in SA, Municipal (like the upcoming ones), Provincial and National. The Provincial and National elections happen at the same time (you receive 2 separate ballots) and the next one is in 2019.
- In the upcoming municipal elections, you will also receive 2 ballots. One is for your ward councillor, and the other is for proportional representation. This means that the first you vote for a person, and the second you vote for a party, who then puts forward a the person that they select to represent the party. This applies for metropolitan municipalities, it's slightly different if you live outside of a metro (city).
- If you haven't heard, or don't know anything about your ward councillors, get to know them! You can search for them on the IEC website. Some of the political parties also list their ward councillors (and their contact details) on their websites.
- In some cases, you might want a certain party to retain control of your municipality, but you might not like their plans, which are laid out in their manifesto, or believe they haven't been responsive enough in the past. You could then vote for another party on the proportional representation part of the ballot, but vote for the party you would like to retain control (actually their candidate) for your ward. This could be one way to support smaller parties, but does rely on your being pretty certain that the incumbent party will retain power.
- Find out about parties plans on a specific issue (I'd choose the environment, but what's your issue? Crime? Support for small businesses? Free wifi?). If you do - share your findings!
- Contact my councillor and find out what she or he has already done, and what their plans are. Share what they say with those in the ward/community.
- Contact an expert on an issue and find out if they have, or if they know of anyone who has, compared the political parties stance on their issue. Perhaps ask them to summarise it?
As said in this Story of Stuff video: Being a responsible citizen starts with voting, but that really is just the beginning!
Update 01/08: Follow @AGFaull (Senior Researcher, Criminology, UCT) and look back through his timeline for some information and opinion on the political parties approach to crime.
1 comment:
Pretty good summary Glen of the discussion we had. For me it is a question of what sort of ward you are in. If you are in a ward which has in the past had an overwhelming majority for one party then there is not much difference your direct vote can make (Whether you are for or against that party). So just vote for your favourite candidate or party. But if you are in a marginal ward (not many of those due to our racially separated areas and voters still voting on racial lines) then your vote becomes strategic and you might want to vote for a party that you think is under-represented overall.
With your PR vote you may be given a choice of a plethora of parties, because any party that puts forward even just one candidate will appear on your PR ballot list. Here, if the party you most favour is in a "swing" metro or municipality (as opposed to ward) then you will want to vote for that party,but if the metro is "safe" then you could be free to vote for a smaller party whose voice you feel needs to be heard in the metro/municipality, because even if only 5% of people vote for them they will secure a seat.
Long story - here is an example. You favour the DA but would dearly like the Green Party to have some voice in the Cape Town metro. The Green party is not standing in your ward but is in other wards. So you vote for the DA candidate in your ward (especially if your ward is marginal) and you use your PR vote for the Green Party in the hope that they will get a PR councillor or two.
Enough! The father, not the sister or brother-in-law.
Post a Comment