The Independent Electoral Commission had not yet decided whether a special Braille ballot template for blind voters will be used in next year’s general election, the IEC said on Tuesday.
The acting chief electoral officer, Mosotho Moepya, was commenting on reports last week that the We-Shop community-based organisation in Cape Town had been instrumental in preparing a special ballot paper to assist the visually impaired.
We-Shop director Willy Mathys said the project had designed a Braille-based template in 1994, which was only recognised by the IEC in 1999. However, it was not used during the poll of that year, possibly because electoral staff had not received training.
Moepya said visually impaired voters in 1999 were assisted to vote by a person of their choice, which could include the presiding officer or electoral staff at the voting station. He said that a ballot template had also been provided in every voting station. It had a window on the right which the voter could use to indicate their preference on the ballot paper.
”A voter had to know the sequence of the parties on the ballot paper in order to select the corresponding window on the template to mark the ballot paper,” Moepya said.
He said Braille inscriptions were not used as few blind people were able to read Braille.
Moepya said the ballot template for the 1999 elections had been prepared by the IEC. – Sapa