"Tell me anywhere where there is a good democracy, and look at the voter turnout. In America, in Canada, and in Europe less than half of the population votes," he said on Friday at the electoral results centre in Pretoria.
IEC officials, independent observers and politicians at the centre all said they were satisfied with the voter turnout in the 2004 election, but admitted that it was only possible to speculate about reasons why people decide not to vote.
They all reacted negatively to the idea of allowing dissatisfied citizens the option of expressing their opinions explicitly on the ballot paper.
"It is quite encouraging that you have such a turnout, there must have been very good campaigning," said Vida Baloomoody, member of the Southern African Development Community observer group. He said most of the elections his observer group monitored had a worse turnout.
But Baloomoody was surprised by the idea of a "none of the above" option on the ballot paper.
"I don't think it is a good idea. You have 21 parties, you must be able to find one at least that is close to your opinion."
Baloomoody felt that staying home from the polling stations was already an indication of being unhappy with the options offered.
However, Moepya agreed it would be good to know what proportion of the non-voters were dissatisfied with the choice of candidates, and what proportion had just "decided it is more pleasant to go to the movies, or stay on the beach."
He laughed at the idea of a "none of the above" option for the ballot papers.
"I don't even want to comment on that because the law doesn't allow it." He said it would be illegal to have that option on the papers because to be a political party you had to register and submit a list of candidates.
"This is the most number of parties South Africa has ever had contesting the election. You can not say the voters don't have an option," said Moepya.
"I think a lot of parties have set themselves up as a 'not any of the above' party," said Steyn Speed of the ANC.
Speed said he was talking about parties that did not have clear policies -- that campaigned on the message "we are different from all the rest."
Just under one percent of votes were spoilt in the 1999 election, according to IEC officials. This time the figure looks to stand at about 1,6%. Moepya said he was unable to guess how many of the votes had been spoilt by mistake, and how many to express dissatisfaction.
In areas where there were many spoilt votes the IEC "intensified voter education," Moepya said. But if votes were being spoilt by mistake the numbers should decrease with each election.
Putting the issue of interpreting the meaning of the non-voting electorate aside, Moepya was confident that high voter turnout did not make a good democracy.
"The more the issues in a country dissipate, the more people don't get to the polls," he said, still smiling after three intense days at the results centre - Sapa.
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