Declining voter turnout poses existential threat to democracy – IRR

The declining proportion of eligible voters who take part in elections raises the risk of democracy in South Africa facing an existential crisis.

So says the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), which last week released a report on changing the country’s electoral system, Electoral reform - time to do it properly. The report says reforms could go some way towards arresting the decline in the number of people who bother to vote.

Says Marius Roodt, IRR analyst and author of the report: “The proportion of people who turn up to vote when we have elections has been declining for some time. While the headline figures generally don’t look so bad they leave out South Africans who are eligible to vote but have not registered as voters.”

He points to statistics from the last two polls to illustrate the point.

“In last year’s national election 60% of registered voters turned up to cast a vote. This might not seem too bad and is better than many other democracies. However, when you include people who were eligible to vote but aren’t registered, then only 40% of eligible South African voters turned up,” says Roodt.

“The participation number of the 2021 local government election is even worse. In that election 46% of registered voters turned up, but this equated to only 30% of eligible voters,” Roodt points out.

“If South Africans don’t see voting as a valid and legitimate way of choosing leaders or of making their concerns heard then democracy itself, as well as elections, risk no longer being seen as legitimate. After all, governments need the consent of the governed – if fewer and fewer people are voting does that consent still exist?”

The IRR proposes an electoral system in which some MPs are elected from geographical constituencies with a parallel list of MPs elected from party lists to ensure proportionality.

Roodt says having constituencies where MPs are directly elected by voters could go some way to getting people involved in politics again and helping to stem the decline in voter turnout.

“Of course, this is not a silver bullet but by re-establishing the link between MPs and communities, we could go some way to getting South African voters engaged in politics again,” Roodt says.

He notes that this could also force parties to ensure that they put up high-calibre candidates.

Roodt concludes: “While there is no guarantee that these reforms will see an increase in voter turnout something has to change to get South Africans engaged again. The continued decline in voter turnout is cause for serious concern and it is not an exaggeration to say that it could pose an existential threat to South African democracy.”

 Media contact: Marius Roodt Head of Campaigns Tel: 082 779 7035 Email: marius@irr.org.za

Media enquiries: Michael Morris Tel: 066 302 1968 Email: michael@irr.org.za