JOHANNESBURG, Thursday 1 October 2026 — The Electoral Commission has opposed a Democratic Alliance Electoral Court application challenging single-name proportional-representation candidate lists submitted by ActionSA, the EFF, MK Party and GOOD, arguing that electoral law requires it to apply objective candidate-list requirements equally and that the DA’s case is without legal merit.
The IEC’s answering affidavit turns a political dispute over how several parties structured their candidate lists into a direct disagreement between the DA and the institution responsible for administering the 4 November local government elections.
The DA wants the Electoral Court to prevent the four parties from deliberately relying on provisions that allow a party to supplement its PR list after an election when it wins more seats than it has listed candidates.
The affected parties maintain that their approach is permitted by existing legislation.
No court has yet determined the dispute.
IEC says law sets objective requirements
At the centre of the case is Item 17 of Schedule 1 to the Local Government: Municipal Structures Act.
The provision requires the IEC to notify a party if its candidate list contains fewer names than the number of seats to which the party becomes entitled after votes have been counted and to request a supplemented list.
The DA argues that the provision is intended to deal with genuine situations in which a party unexpectedly wins more seats than it has candidates available to fill.
It says ActionSA, the EFF, MK Party and GOOD are instead deliberately using the mechanism as an electoral strategy by submitting one-name PR lists despite fielding significantly larger numbers of ward candidates.
The IEC disputes the legal foundation of that argument.
“The commission’s position is based on a single consideration. The Electoral Act and the Structures Act prescribe objective requirements which the commission must apply to every party in the same way,” the commission said in its court response, according to TimesLIVE.
It described the DA’s arguments as “factually opportunistic and legally specious” and said the case was without merit in law.
DA says voters should know PR candidates before election
The DA launched its urgent Electoral Court application on 22 September.
DA Federal Council chairperson Ashor Sarupen said the party was challenging what it regarded as deliberate concealment of candidates from voters.
ActionSA has nominated more than 2,000 ward candidates while submitting single-name PR lists in many of the municipalities it is contesting.
The DA says the EFF and MK Party have adopted similar approaches across numerous municipalities, while GOOD has also submitted short lists in places where the party could potentially win multiple PR seats.
The DA argues that voters should know before polling day which individuals could ultimately represent a political party in a council.
Its application asks the Electoral Court to determine whether parties may intentionally submit insufficient PR lists with the intention of supplementing them once the election result reveals how many seats they have won.
The party argues that allowing this practice would transform a statutory mechanism designed to address an unexpected candidate shortfall into a deliberate election strategy.
ActionSA says its strategy complies with law
ActionSA has openly acknowledged that its short PR lists are deliberate.
The party says its candidate-selection policy provides for unsuccessful ward candidates to be ranked for available PR seats after the election according to their performance.
ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont argues that this means voters themselves effectively influence the ordering of the party’s eventual PR representatives through their support for ward candidates.
GOOD has separately argued that neither the Municipal Electoral Act nor the Municipal Structures Act specifies a minimum number of candidates that must appear on a party’s PR list.
Both parties have accused the DA of attempting to impose requirements that do not appear in the legislation.
The DA rejects that interpretation and says the dispute concerns the purpose for which the post-election supplementation mechanism may lawfully be used.
DA’s alternative relief could affect first council meetings
The implications extend beyond the publication of candidate names.
According to ActionSA’s description of the DA’s court papers, the DA’s primary relief would prevent affected parties from supplementing intentionally short PR lists after the election.
ActionSA says the DA alternatively wants any supplementation delayed until after the inaugural meetings of newly elected councils.
Those first meetings are politically significant because councillors elect mayors, speakers and other office-bearers and coalition arrangements are often formalised during that period.
If parties were temporarily unable to fill all the PR seats their vote totals entitled them to, the composition of inaugural council meetings could be affected.
ActionSA argues that such an outcome could distort proportional representation during the formation of municipal governments.
That is ActionSA’s interpretation of the potential consequences of the relief sought and has not been determined by the Electoral Court.
Dispute could affect several major municipalities
The case is particularly consequential because the parties involved are competing in municipalities where coalition negotiations are expected after the election.
ActionSA is a significant contender in Johannesburg and Tshwane, while the EFF and MK Party could hold substantial blocs across several Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal councils.
GOOD is contesting municipalities including Cape Town.
In Johannesburg, ActionSA has submitted a single-name PR list despite its established representation in the current council, one of the examples specifically cited by the DA in launching the case.
The dispute therefore has potential consequences beyond administrative candidate-list compliance.
A ruling restricting post-election supplementation could influence who is legally available to occupy PR seats immediately after results are declared and, depending on the relief ultimately granted, the numbers available during the formation of coalition governments.
IEC’s intervention sharpens legal question
Until now, much of the public dispute centred on competing interpretations advanced by the political parties.
The IEC’s answering affidavit is significant because the commission is responsible for applying the provisions at issue.
Its position is that the legislation establishes objective requirements and does not give the commission the power to determine whether a party submitted a short list because it underestimated its support or deliberately intended to supplement the list later.
ActionSA welcomed the IEC’s opposition to the DA application on Thursday, saying the commission’s affidavit supported its interpretation of the legislation.
That does not determine the legal question.
The Electoral Court must decide how the relevant provisions should be interpreted and whether the deliberate submission of a short PR list can lawfully trigger the post-election supplementation mechanism.
The judgment could become one of the most consequential electoral-law rulings before voting begins on 4 November because it will determine not only what candidate information parties must disclose before polling day, but potentially how PR vacancies are filled immediately after the results.
