Why NEC ballot shortage demands scrutiny

Chung Hyo-shik

The author is the social news editor at the JoongAng Ilbo. 

A new nickname has emerged from the ongoing protests outside the Handball Gymnasium at Olympic Park in Seoul's Songpa District: "Oldarc," short for "Olympic Park Joan of Arc." The name was coined by conservative online communities for a woman in her 20s or 30s who, on Tuesday, single-handedly blocked access to the building for about two hours by holding the entrance door shut.

Her action prevented People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok, other opposition lawmakers and officials from sports organizations, including the Korea Fencing Federation, from entering the building to retrieve equipment and other belongings. The gymnasium served as the vote-counting center for Songpa District during the June 3 local elections. About 380 ballot boxes, ballot papers,  ballot sorting machines, counting equipment, tally boards and election documents all remain inside.

The protest has continued for nearly two weeks, drawing around 1,000 participants on weekdays and as many as 30,000 on weekends. Demonstrators say they are trying to preserve what they believe could become evidence related to allegations surrounding the ballot shortage that disrupted voting on election day. They argue that neither the joint police-prosecution investigation team nor the National Election Commission (NEC) has taken sufficient steps to preserve potential evidence.

Instead, Songpa Police Station has reportedly opened a preliminary investigation into the woman known as "Oldarc" on suspicion of obstructing the work of sports organizations. That risks inflaming younger protesters who say their voting rights were compromised while doing little to resolve the underlying dispute.

Korea has experienced a similar controversy before. On Dec. 16, 1987, the day of the presidential election, election officials in Seoul's Guro District moved absentee ballot boxes before counting began. The move triggered rumors of ballot manipulation, leading protesters to occupy the district office for 44 hours before police dispersed them, arresting more than 1,000 people.

Those absentee ballot boxes were never counted. Instead, they remained sealed in NEC storage for 29 years before being opened in 2016 for an authenticity study commissioned by the Korean Political Science Association. The conclusion was clear: The ballot boxes had not been altered or forged. No evidence was found to support allegations of duplicate or relay voting in favor of then-ruling party candidate Roh Tae-woo. Although moving the ballot boxes in advance was not illegal, election authorities were criticized for creating unnecessary suspicion through poor procedures.

The current ballot shortage controversy is far more serious than the 1987 incident. According to an independent NEC fact-finding committee, additional ballot papers had to be supplied at 91 polling stations across 10 cities and provinces, including 42 in Seoul. Voting was temporarily suspended at 26 polling stations, including one in Jamsil, before resuming after vote counting had already begun and continuing until 10 p.m. Basic principles of free and secret elections were compromised.

Cho Hyun-wook, who chaired the fact-finding committee, said that 12 voters who had already received waiting tickets at Polling Station No. 2 in Jamsil 7-dong eventually left without voting. In other words, some citizens were denied the opportunity to cast a ballot because election officials failed to prepare enough ballot papers.

Major disasters are often caused less by malice than by negligence. According to the committee's findings, officials reportedly reduced the number of printed ballots to about half the expected electorate to lessen the burden of storing or disposing of unused ballots later. Local elections require seven separate ballot papers, making election administration more complicated than presidential or parliamentary elections. Officials were also reportedly concerned about preserving unused ballots in the event of election lawsuits and the growing pressure created by constant monitoring from election-fraud activists.

Most troubling of all, a decision with direct implications for citizens' voting rights was reportedly made not by the constitutionally empowered NEC itself but by career civil servants, including the secretary-general and the head of election policy.

That is why the priority should not be investigating "Oldarc." It should be determining exactly how the NEC allowed the ballot shortage to occur in the first place.