Election watchdog unsure of how many people were unable to vote with ballot shortage debacle

The election watchdog "does not have data" on the number of tickets it handed out or collected from people waiting to vote in the June 3 local elections and therefore cannot determine how many would-be voters did not cast ballots.

The administrative failure came to light in documents submitted by the National Election Commission (NEC) to Rep. Youn Kun-young of the Democratic Party on Tuesday.

Ballot shortages occurred at 91 of the country's 14,288 polling stations, according to a report submitted by the NEC to a parliamentary special committee investigating the controversy. Voting was temporarily suspended at 26 of those locations.

The NEC reported that it supplied an additional 6,297 ballots to polling stations that lacked ballots, 3,291 of which were used.

However, because the commission failed to keep separate records of ticket distribution and collection, the number of voters who may have been denied the chance to vote remains unknown.

After the shortage controversy erupted, the NEC established an independent fact-finding committee with experts from outside the agency and launched an internal investigation.

The committee reviewed logs from all 26 polling stations where voting was suspended.

Some of the logs, prepared by polling station supervisors to record events and incidents that occur during voting, reportedly contain information about the tickets in the voting queue.

The records showed that 12 voters at Polling Station No. 7 in the Jamsil 2-dong area of Songpa District, southern Seoul, where voting was suspended due to a shortage, were unable to cast ballots, according to Cho Hyun-wook, the chair of NEC’s fact-finding committee.

However, Cho also acknowledged the shortcomings of the voting logs.

"The voting records do mention that some people waited and then left, but the situation was extremely chaotic and [staff at the polling stations] were simultaneously responding to complaints, so it is difficult to know whether everything was recorded accurately," Cho said during an interview with MBC Radio on Monday.

Although an estimate, around 30 to 40 voters may not have been able to vote.

"Based solely on the voting records, it appears that at least 30 to 40 voters across the 26 polling stations were unable to vote,” said Cho in an interview with JoongAng Ilbo on Tuesday, adding that the committee struggled to determine the exact numbers.

The ticket distribution and collection records could become a critical issue in appeals and lawsuits seeking to invalidate election results, according to legal experts.

Article 224 of the Public Official Election Act states that even when there is evidence that election rules have been violated, an election or a candidate's victory may be declared invalid “only when it is deemed to have had a substantial effect on the result."

"We need to find out how many voters were prevented from casting ballots because of the shortage to determine how it affected the election results," said an unnamed lawyer who was a former presiding judge. "[Accurate] records of ticket distribution and collection are crucial for the [investigation]."

"A citizen's vote is both the beginning and the end of an election," said Rep. Youn. "The fact that the NEC cannot even identify which polling stations distributed tickets or how many were handed out shows just how unorganized the election administration was at the polling stations."

The controversy shows no signs of abating, with a protest demanding a revote due to the ballot shortage in front of the SK Olympic Handball Gymnasium in Jamsil entering its 19th day.

BY PARK TAE-IN [[email protected]]