Pretoria - Over one million new potential voters have registered to vote in the 18 May local government elections.
Releasing the final registration weekend results on Wednesday, Independent Electoral Commission chairperson (IEC), Dr Brigalia Bam, said they were satisfied with the numbers they had received during the final voter registration weekend.
"There were 1 081 667 new registrations, a further 1 417 089 persons re-registered because they have moved to a new voting district ... A further 233 211 persons re-registered in the same voting district mostly as a result of demarcation issues," she said.
Over the two registration weekend drives for the 2011 municipal elections, a total of 2 731 967 people registered or re-registered. This figure does not include those who visited the voting stations to verify their details on the voters' roll.
The provincial spread of new registrations for the two registration weekends indicated that most occurred in KwaZulu-Natal with 285 208, followed by Gauteng with 200 751 and the Eastern Cape 157 581.
Bam said women represented just over 53 percent of total registration activity, while men made up 47 percent.
As far as the new registrations go, about 80 percent was from young persons under the age of 30 years.
The voters' roll currently contains the details of some 23.6 million voters. However, Bam said the final verifications will take place in the next few days.
Initially, the IEC had set itself a target to get a total of 24 million people on the voters' roll. The final number will be announced once it has been certified.
Currently, there are 164 political parties registered to contest the municipal elections, but the IEC said the number was increasing daily.
