Voters’ roll shuts at midnight, marking 90 days to LGE 2026

Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa has officially proclaimed 4 November 2026 as the date for local government elections, marking the start of the 90-day countdown and triggering the closure of the voters’ roll at midnight on Friday.

The proclamation, published in the Government Gazette in terms of Section 24.1 of the Municipal Structures Act, formally calls the election and sets in motion the electoral timetable for the processes required before polling day.

Defend Our Democracy Executive Director Wade Manning says once the midnight deadline passed, no new voter registrations or changes to existing details would be possible until after the election.

“The voters’ roll will close automatically at midnight, which is tonight (Friday). There are no processes for new registrations and no changes to existing details that can be made thereafter until after the election, essentially. So in terms of Section 24.1 of the Municipal Structures Act, which thereby essentially formally calls the election and triggers other electoral processes and the electoral timetable, which will then be set out for official processes that must then happen for the 4th of November to take place,” Manning said.



He said the closure of the roll was particularly important at local government level, where voters cast ballots for ward councillors in their specific municipal areas.

“If you live somewhere else, you essentially can’t be voting for somebody who lives elsewhere. The right people must be voting in the right municipal areas,” Manning said.

Defend Our Democracy is also running an Election Watch campaign, seeking to deploy 5 000 trained observers to voting stations across the country on election day.

Manning said observers would be trained through workshops and an online pathway covering the code of conduct for observers, a three-tier escalation system for reporting irregularities, and what to look out for during the voting process.

A national coordination centre would monitor incoming reports on the day, with all data compiled into a validated, fact-checked report submitted to the IEC after the election.

“What we’re doing is running a national war room which watches reports coming through via a digital platform. All of that data after the 4th of November becomes a validated, fact-checked report that we then submit to the IEC as part of strengthening the commission’s own credibility — not to attack it, not to contest it, but to actually say that there’s been an independent witness of this process,” Manning said.