South African elections – party advertising at polling stations

It was an early start to the day for many to avoid long queues at voting stations. We wanted to get the voting out of the way, and joined a queue of 50 people at 6:30am in Pretoria. The voting station was very well organised and by 7am a queue of over 800 people formed outside the primary school.

Within 40 minutes voting was over and the waiting for the final election results starts.

What really irks me is the disregard of the ruling party on any rules, such as the complete disregard of the Electoral Act 73 of 1998:

Paragraph 108 states: On voting day no person may engage in any political activity other than casting a vote

While I am pretty certain that the ANC made sure that they are outside of the boundary of the voting station, they still put up their displays and posters a mere 5 metres away from the entrance of the voting station (and in plain view of the voters) – not playing nice on free and fair election day, aren’t we.