DA heads to Electoral Court over ‘hidden’ PR candidates - IOL
The DA has approached the Electoral Court to challenge one-name proportional representation lists submitted by ActionSA, the EFF, MK Party and GOOD ahead of the 2026 Local Government Elections.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has approached the Electoral Court in an urgent bid to challenge the submission of one-name proportional representation (PR) lists by ActionSA, the EFF, the MK Party and GOOD ahead of the 2026 Local Government Elections.
The DA argues that the four parties are deliberately using the provision that allows parties to add candidates to their PR lists after an election if they win more seats than they have candidates to avoid identifying their full complement of candidates before voters cast their ballots.
The party says voters should know which candidates they are voting for when they choose a political party and has asked the Electoral Court to determine whether the practice is legal and constitutional.
“The principle at stake is so fundamental that it cannot go unchallenged: parties are required to present voters with the names of their candidates before voters go into a voting booth to choose their political parties, not after the votes have been counted,” the DA said.
The DA said the provision was intended for circumstances where a party unexpectedly wins more PR seats than the number of candidates on its list, rather than as a strategy for determining candidates after the election.
The party has pointed to the scale of the practice, saying the EFF is contesting almost every ward in South Africa with thousands of ward candidates while submitting one PR candidate in every municipality.
It said ActionSA had nominated more than 2,000 individual ward candidates while submitting one-person PR lists in virtually every municipality it contests.
In Johannesburg, where ActionSA currently has dozens of PR councillors, the DA said the party had submitted only one PR candidate.
The DA said the MK Party had also fielded candidates across thousands of wards while submitting one-person PR lists, while GOOD had done the same in municipalities where it already holds multiple PR seats.
“The scale and uniformity of this practice is precisely why the DA has approached the Electoral Court,” the party said.
The DA further claimed that ActionSA had publicly acknowledged that its approach was deliberate, saying it submitted one name so it could supplement its list after discovering how many seats it had won.
According to the DA, ActionSA had also said it would use the seats it attained as rewards for party members who worked hard during the election campaign.
The DA said the Electoral Court would have to decide whether the topping-up of PR lists after seat calculations could be deliberately used as an electoral strategy.
“The DA’s case is that it cannot be done that way, because these parties would be hiding their candidates from voters,” the party said.
The DA said its application was particularly important following the ANC’s exclusion from contesting in various municipalities after failing to submit its lists on time.
The party argued that if the ANC had engaged in the same practice of submitting only one name on its PR list, it would have remained on the ballot.
The DA has asked the Electoral Court to determine the legality and constitutionality of the practice and to grant appropriate relief.
“Voters must be presented with the candidates they are voting for. Elections cannot become games of sleight-of-hand,” the DA said.
“The ballot box must determine which candidates are elected.”
