Korea ballot crisis exposed NEC failures

Kim Won-bae

The author is an editorial writer at the JoongAng Ilbo.   

"It is inevitable that something will go wrong in every election."

That observation appears in the International IDEA report "Risk Management in Elections" (2016). Elections are massive logistical operations that require the mobilization of an enormous number of people and materials in a short period, making some failures unavoidable. The real test is not whether problems occur but how election authorities respond to them.

Around noon on June 3, a polling station in Songpa District, southern Seoul, reported a ballot shortage. District election officials began handwriting serial numbers on emergency ballots and sorting seven different ballot types for local council races. Even senior officials joined the effort, which delayed crisis management.

Replacement ballots were delivered in unsealed shopping bags and plastic zip bags by temporary assistants, social service workers and local government employees, bypassing the normal chain of custody.

The most serious problem was that no contingency manual existed.

During a parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday, the National Election Commission (NEC) admitted that it had failed to anticipate ballot shortages after reducing printing and had prepared no detailed response. By printing fewer ballots without establishing a contingency plan, the NEC itself increased the risk.

International IDEA warns that such failures can undermine confidence in democracy unless risks are identified and managed systematically. Korea's election authorities lacked this framework.

The United States offers a useful contrast. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission, established after the disputed 2000 presidential election, classifies ballot shortages as one of the most important election-specific emergencies. Its guidelines recommend simulations, trained mobile response teams and command centers that coordinate supplies among polling stations on election day.

The root cause of Korea's crisis was insufficient ballot printing, but poor distribution made matters worse. According to the NEC, Songpa District still had about 42,000 unused ballots overall. Had mobile response teams existed, officials would not have wasted valuable time deciding who should transport additional ballots or have used unsealed shopping bags as makeshift ballot containers.

Debate over the NEC has largely focused on external oversight following last year's Constitutional Court ruling, which limits audits by the Board of Audit and Inspection. Stronger oversight may improve accountability, but it would not have prevented polling stations from running out of ballots. The Songpa incident exposed a failure of election management rather than a lack of external supervision.

National elections depend on more than 400,000 temporary workers, though the NEC has only about 3,000 permanent staff. Low pay, a heavy workload and unclear responsibilities have made election duty increasingly unpopular. During this year's local elections, more than 126,000 poll workers — about 30 percent of the total — were ordinary citizens rather than civil servants or teachers. Because training is based on internal NEC guidelines rather than legal requirements, many first-time workers received only brief instructions before Election Day.

Poorly trained personnel can also fuel election controversies. During the 2020 general election, 294 ballots in Incheon's Yeonsu B constituency mistakenly received a Japanese Rising Sun-style stamp after a temporary worker used the wrong seal. Although the courts ruled that there was no evidence of fraud, the incident generated years of suspicion because election officials failed to promptly explain how the mistake had occurred.

A 2022 study commissioned by the NEC concluded that Korea's government-dependent election management model had reached its limits and was no longer sustainable.

Other democracies have faced similar failures. Berlin's 2021 federal, state and local elections suffered ballot shortages and distribution errors when multiple elections and a referendum took place simultaneously. An independent review concluded that the chaos resulted from organizational and administrative failures rather than fraud. Instead of blaming the roughly 38,000 election workers, the commission recommended standardized operating procedures, clearer reporting lines, polling stations sized according to expected turnout and substantially higher compensation for poll workers. Court rulings later led to a partial rerun of the election.

The NEC has now proposed reforms, including a nationwide real-time ballot monitoring system; revised crisis-response manuals; regular emergency drills; organizational restructuring to allow local commissions to focus on polling operations; and a national election support task force involving the Ministry of the Interior and Safety.

The challenge, however, is implementation. Ballot shortages previously occurred during the 2022 local elections, the 2024 general election and last year's presidential election. Despite recommendations from a special committee established to restore public confidence, another major failure followed within months.

Some experts argue that the problem lies in the NEC's organizational structure itself. Jang Young-soo, a professor emeritus at Korea University, has argued that the commission should adopt full-time leadership and strengthen training during periods without major elections. Han Eui-seok, a professor of political science at Sungshin Women's University, said that the NEC's decentralized structure blurs authority during crises, and Kim Dae-geun, a research fellow at the Korean Institute of Criminology and Justice, has called for consolidating local offices into larger regional centers with clearer chains of command and stronger emergency response capacity.

Reforming the NEC should therefore go beyond strengthening external oversight. Elections will never be free of mistakes. The real task is to build a command structure, work force and training system capable of ensuring that, even when something goes wrong, the voting itself never stops.