Section 65: Undue influence

65. Undue influence (1) Any person who, directly or indirectly, by himself or by any other person on his behalf, makes use of, or threatens to make use of, any force, R20 – 29 [Issue 1] Representation of the People Act violence, or restraint, or inflicts, or threatens to inflict, by himself or by any other person, any temporal or spiritual injury, damage, harm, or loss upon or against any person in order to induce or compel that person to vote or refrain from voting, or on account of that person having voted or refrained from voting, at an election, or who by abduction, duress or any fraudulent contrivance, impedes or prevents the free exercise of the franchise of an elector, or thereby compels, induces, or prevails upon, an elector to give or refrain from giving his vote at an election, shall be guilty of undue influence. (2) Any person who on polling day— (a) annoys, molests or otherwise interferes with an elector; (b) attempts to obtain information as to the candidate for whom an elector is about to vote or has voted, or as to the number on the ballot paper given to an elector; (c) remains outside a voting room except for the purposes of gaining entry to the voting room in order to vote; or (d) within 200 metres of the precincts of a polling station— (i) loiters in any street or open place; or (ii) by word, message, writing or in any other manner, endeavours to persuade any person to vote for a candidate or party or dissuades any person from voting or from voting for a candidate or party, shall be guilty of undue influence. (3) Any person who, as from the day of election appointed under section 41 (1) (b) and until the expiry of 3 days after the day appointed for the taking of a poll under section 41 (1) (a) (ii), opens or maintains, within 200 metres of the precincts of a polling station, for the purpose of any activity directed towards promoting or procuring the election of a candidate at an election, an office in any room, building or place whatsoever, whether public or private, open or closed, shall be guilty of undue influence. [S. 65 amended by GN 80 of 1982.]