Online petition for more overseas voting stations

Please find attached a soundbite by Kelly Clark, the DA Abroad communications manager.

The Democratic Alliance Abroad will this week launch an online petition to call for more overseas voting stations for the 2024 National Elections.

After months of pressure from the DA and DA Abroad, the IEC launched the online registration portal for South Africans abroad yesterday. The portal, although welcomed, still limits South Africans abroad to register and vote at embassies, high commissions and consulates which are often challenging to access.

With more than two million South Africans either living, working, studying, or traveling abroad, the IEC has an obligation to provide these citizens with their constitutional right to register and to vote and to ensure that voting stations are easily accessible for all South Africans abroad.

The only solution to ensuring that overseas South Africans can vote in 2024 would be an increased number of voting stations to accommodate cities with high numbers of South African citizens.

Irrespective of where in the world you find yourself, South Africans abroad should be able to vote in a city near them without incurring high costs and long travel hours to exercise their constitutional right to vote in the 2024 National and Provincial Election.

The DA Abroad will continue to fight for South African citizens abroad to exercise their constitutional right and put pressure on the IEC and DIRCO to ensure that more voting stations are made available. We therefore encourage South Africans living, working or studying abroad to sign our petition and to share it with South African friends and families across the world. By signing this petition, you will contribute to our campaign to ensure that all South Africans citizens abroad can exercise their constitutional right in the upcoming election.

The DA will exhaust every avenue to ensure South Africans have fair and equitable access to voting.

To take part in the online please complete the quick questionnaire here: Petition for more overseas voting stations near you (da.org.za)

The petition will close by 31 January 2024 – we encourage everyone living or working abroad to complete it – the more people that partake, the more power we will have to make this happen.