The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) in the North West has expressed its excitement over the amazing amount of young people who registered at its 1 737 voter registration centres.
The provincial IEC’s Dr Tumelontle Thiba has hailed political parties for encouraging the youth to register and adds that their IEC’s voter education program yielded good results.
The IEC in the province is ecstatic about the number of first-time voters who came to register. Dr Thiba says that young people came in their numbers specifically on Sunday.
“What I am extremely happy about – we had targeted 20 000 new voters. In other words, we were planning to register completely new voters adding up to 20 000. However, we are happy to announce that we actually got much more than we expected yesterday alone. We had a total of 5 359 young people from 16 to 21 and today we had 9 385 between 16 to 21 years old. So we can tell that in our province, we do not have such a thing as youth voter apathy.”
Dr Thiba also applauds the IEC’s voter education programs and the work done by political parties that encouraged people to register.
“We are extremely happy because we know that young people responded to the call made by the IEC and particularly by different political parties and we are grateful to the drive that was initiated and supported and maintained by political parties and we are also very grateful to the IEC staff permanent, contract and temporary staff.”
Thiba says they are still hopeful that they will reach more young people who are discouraged, to come and register.
