Ahead of the 2019 elections, there was a lot of noise around ‘wasted votes’, with the DA in particular warning Western Cape voters about backing smaller parties that would fail to win a seat in the National Assembly.

The DA won the Western Cape, of course, but fared dismally in the rest of the country.

As we reported last week, a party needs around 35 000 votes (it’s not an exact science) to secure one of the 400 National Assembly seats, which also brings with it a pretty cushy salary (R1 106 940 a year, or R92 250 per month).

Each party has to pay a R200 000 deposit to contest the national elections, and R45 000 for each individual province they contest, meaning that competing in all nine provinces ends up costing a cool R605 000.

When a party secures as much as a single seat, they are refunded, but if they fail to do so, then that money is forfeited.

As Business Insider SA reports, that made for a lucrative payday for the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC),

South Africa’s 2019 national and provincial election has earned the Electoral Commission R16.7 million thanks to the massacre of minor parties…there were a record number of parties that failed to cross that bar in 2019.

The national election had the largest number of failed parties at 34, but Limpopo and Gauteng each came close with 30 parties on the ballot with not a single seat won between them. The Northern Cape saw the smallest number of failures at 17.

R16,7 million in forfeited deposits – not bad going. Should at least cover the costs of that drunk voter who crashed his voting booth.

Also, thanks to Hlaudi’s African Content Movement (ACM) and the Capitalist Party of South Africa (the Purple Cow brigade), amongst others who failed to secure a single seat.

Here’s a breakdown by province:

In 2014, the IEC only nabbed R8,28 million in forfeits.

I would love to know where Hlaudi got his deposit from.

Whilst the IEC have netted that decent payday, up almost 200% from the 2014 elections, it hardly covers the cost of running an election.

As reported in a City Press article back in February:

The last time there was a national election, in 2014, the IEC’s funding almost doubled the preceding year from R871 million to R1.6 billion.

This time the increase was similar: from R1.3 billion to R2 billion – an additional R700 million. This year the IEC gets another R2 billion. The extra money has been spent on registration work and the almost 500 000 temporary workers the elections will require at 23 000 voting stations.

The South African Police Service gets an additional R180 million related to this year’s election. This is for extra compensation for officers who escort ballots and guard “medium and high risk” voting stations.

When it is all over, the presidency plans to spend R120 million on the inauguration of – in all likelihood – a re-elected president Cyril Ramaphosa.

That R120 million figure has been widely and correctly criticised, and it remains to be seen whether those costs remain as high as originally slated.

If they do, then some of those who ticked ANC on their ballot papers are going to feel rather hard done by, although they’ll probably still vote for the ANC when 2024 rolls around.

[sources:businsider&citypress]