The African National Congress (ANC) has told the Constitutional Court that the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) had received the details of 181 candidates for six municipalities on its system before the nomination deadline. The ANC argued that the "Submit as Final" button on the IEC's online candidate nomination system was not a legal requirement. According to the party, completing the electronic nomination forms and uploading the required annexures before the 5pm deadline on 28 August was sufficient.
The ANC missed the candidate nomination deadline in six municipalities: Port St Johns, Ngquza Hill, Walter Sisulu and Sundays River Valley in the Eastern Cape; Mangaung in the Free State; and uMshwathi in KwaZulu-Natal. Representing the ANC, advocate Daniel Berger argued that the party had complied with the law by completing the electronic forms and uploading the annexures before the deadline. Berger said the regulation does not mention an additional or final step after all the annexures have been loaded into the IEC system.
Berger told the court that by the deadline, the IEC had the required candidate information on its system and the ANC had paid the necessary fees to register its candidates. He said the "Submit as Final" button on the IEC's online candidate nomination system did not itself submit the documents, which had been uploaded. Berger argued that the requirement for the button appears in no act and in no regulations, but only on a screen and in the manual of the Online Candidate Nomination System.
The IEC disputes the ANC's account, maintaining that its online nomination portal functioned properly and that saving information on the system does not constitute a formal submission. The commission argues that the deadlines must be applied consistently to all affected political parties to protect the integrity of the electoral process. The IEC's stance is that the "Submit as Final" button is a necessary step to confirm submissions.
Berger argued that the ANC's uploading of documents was equivalent to physically delivering nomination papers, and that the information had been submitted to the commission before the deadline. He said the party's case rested on the interpretation of the legislation governing candidate nominations and the status of the "Submit as Final" button, which was introduced on the IEC's website in 2016.
The ANC rejected the Democratic Alliance's (DA) argument that allowing it to rectify its nomination submissions would undermine the 4 November local government elections. Berger said the party's problems with the system did not undermine the work or integrity of the commission. He emphasized that the ANC was not seeking to reopen the nomination period but wanted the IEC to accept the candidates whose details had been uploaded.
Deputy Chief Justice Mlambo questioned Berger on the requirement that parties and candidates submit their nominations in the prescribed manner, including completing and uploading the relevant forms. Berger replied that saving the form on the commission's system constituted submission, and that clicking "Submit as Final" merely notified the commission that a party's submission was final.
Key points
- The ANC argues that the 'Submit as Final' button on the IEC website is not a legal requirement for candidate nominations.
