Jean Redpath argues that local government electoral reform should focus on banning multi-constituency candidacy, where the same candidate stands in multiple wards to artificially inflate weak parties’ vote shares, rather than implementing electoral thresholds.
On Tuesday, Parliament is considering electoral reform at the national and provincial levels. But, so far, absent from the parliamentary programme is debate on electoral reform for local government.
Reform before the 2026/27 elections is urgent to remove multi-constituency candidacy – an absurdity which currently only applies at the local government level and has been closely linked to instability and weak leadership.
The only local-level reform on the table is electoral thresholds – prescribing a minimum number of votes required to win a seat. The thesis seems to be that one-seat parties earning single seats with a small fraction of the vote have been the cause of instability. But this misdiagnoses the problem.
The real problem
The problem is that internally weak parties have been able to artificially raise their share of votes and seats by exploiting how seats are calculated through the practice of multi-constituency candidacy. How does this work?
Voters have two votes for local or metro government: one for a ward candidate, and one proportional representation (PR) vote. Contrary to what voters might be forgiven for thinking, PR seats are not determined by the PR vote alone.
To determine the total seats a party earns, the number of votes a party receives in favour of their ward candidates in every ward is added to the number of PR votes it earns in every ward. Total votes determine total seats. Ward seats won outright are subtracted from the total seats to determine PR seats. Thus, even if a party fails to win a single ward seat, it can amass sufficient votes overall, from both PR and ward votes, to earn seats.
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Remainders of votes compete so that a fraction of the quota of votes needed to earn a seat outright can still earn a seat, if it is among the highest remainders of votes. In Johannesburg in 2021, as many as 15 parties earned additional PR seats with remainders, i.e., less than a full quota of votes, and nevertheless earned a seat.
Because total seats use both votes, a political party needs to field a candidate in every ward. Not fielding a candidate means not picking up any ward votes, and those wards’ lack of votes reduces the total number of seats.
It is also why it is important for voters who think they live in a ward that is “safe” for their preferred political party to still vote for that party, as every additional ward and PR vote goes toward total seats. Splitting a vote – voting for a different party on the ward vs PR vote – essentially means giving each party half your support.
Same candidate standing in several wards
Where the absurdity comes in is that some small, internally weak parties with few members and few candidates available for election have exploited the seat calculation method by having the same candidates stand in multiple wards, just so that they can get ward votes.
Obviously, the same candidate cannot be elected in more than one ward – a by-election is triggered if that happens, itself a disaster for certainty and stability – but the political party nevertheless picks up a few votes in each ward, which goes toward their total vote share.
This is not a theoretical academic concern. In 2021, in Johannesburg, Al-Jam-ah fielded the same candidate in 114 wards. As a result, although the party earned only one ward seat, it was able to secure not one but two PR seats, largely due to ward votes for the same candidate in 114 wards. Essentially, ward votes earned PR seats. Famously, those two PR councillors, from a party that had only 23 different candidates but stood in all 135 wards, both became mayors of Johannesburg. Ironically, the candidate who garnered the majority of their ward votes then abandoned Johannesburg for Parliament.
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Similarly, in Nelson Mandela Bay in 2021, the National Alliance had the same candidate in 41 of the 120 wards, leading to it obtaining three seats rather than two. This candidate also became mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay.
These examples are not isolated. In Johannesburg in 2021, as many as nine different parties used multi-constituency candidacy. Five of them did not earn a single ward seat, but each earned one PR seat, with their total vote share boosted by the same ward candidates standing again and again. For the majority of these parties, neither of the current proposed electoral thresholds (a 1% threshold or a full-seat quota) would have prevented them from earning seats.
Party’s strength misrepresented
A candidate standing in more than one ward is unfair to the voter. The voter does not know that their candidate is also standing elsewhere and may not be available. The whole point of ward candidacy is personal as well as party accountability – you are electing a person as well as a party. Further, the party’s strength is misrepresented – if a party is unable to field a candidate in every ward, it should not pretend to the voter that it has coverage of the entire metro or local government area. Such parties are boosted in their vote share, beyond their true strength.
Furthermore, such parties will be further boosted by the proposed electoral thresholds, as the seats of small parties not meeting the threshold are distributed among all those parties over the threshold, many of which are parties using multi-constituency candidacy.
There was a time when it was thought that floor-crossing by councillors without losing their seat was legitimate. It was not, causing great instability and voter disillusionment, and was removed from the law.
Multi-constituency candidacy is similar. It is a fraud on the voter and must go.
- Jean Redpath is a senior researcher at the Dullah Omar Institute at the University of the Western Cape.
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