Panel finds Songpa ballot shortage stemmed from lack of on-the-ground response, proper manual

The ballot shortage that disrupted voting in Songpa District, southern Seoul, during the June 3 local elections stemmed from a bungled response by election authorities and the absence of any manual for such a situation, the National Election Commission's (NEC) fact-finding committee found on Friday.

The committee, chaired by Cho Hyun-wook, briefed reporters after its third meeting at the NEC headquarters in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi, on Friday and detailed how the Songpa District election commission responded on June 3. Its account traces a daylong scramble that began before noon.

11:50 a.m. to 11:58 a.m. 

Shortly before noon, between 11:50 and 11:58 a.m., a Songpa District election commission official realized that ballots were running short amid higher-than-expected turnout and asked the Seoul metropolitan election commission for serial numbers to write on unnumbered ballots.

Each ballot is printed with a serial number in its lower-left corner so officials can keep an exact count of how many have been issued. Under the Public Official Election Act, a poll worker must tear off the serial number in front of the voter when handing over a ballot. Once the voting period ends, the detached tabs are sealed in an envelope and stored together with the ballots.

A district clerk then posted a message in a group chat of election commission secretaries and clerks, asking, in effect, what to do if ballots ran out.

1:40 p.m. to 5:09 p.m. 

Starting at around 1:40 p.m., the Songpa commission began writing serial numbers on unnumbered ballots and trucking them to polling stations facing shortages.

Because the local elections involved seven types of ballots that had to be sorted and matched one by one, the deliveries kept falling behind.

At about 4:46 p.m., the No. 2 polling station in Jamsil 7-dong ran out of ballots and temporarily suspended voting.

As requests poured in from several stations at once, the commission gave up on assigning serial numbers and handed out unnumbered ballots as they were. However, by around 5:09 p.m., even those were nearly gone, and the Songpa commission began sending leftover ballots from nearby stations to those that had run out.

5:20 p.m. to 10 p.m. 

At 5:20 p.m., only 40 minutes before polls were due to close, the Songpa commission belatedly asked the higher commission whether it could print ballots on machines used to issue early-voting ballots. At 6 p.m., when voting was supposed to end, some stations were still handing out ballots borrowed from neighbors. The No. 2 polling station in Jamsil 7-dong stayed open until 10 p.m.

The committee pointed to what it called "an across-the-board failure to respond."

"All of the Songpa election commission's staff were pulled in to write serial numbers on the unnumbered ballots," Cho said at Friday's briefing.

"Because they were delivering those ballots themselves, they could not respond to the crisis at all, and they could not even report systematically to the Seoul metropolitan election commission or the NEC. In other words, there was no on-the-ground response whatsoever."

"There was also no manual for a ballot shortage, and even the necessary equipment [to face such a situation] was not properly in place," she continued. "The handover procedures required when ballots are transferred were not followed as well."

Both the ruling and opposition parties are moving quickly toward an investigation.

"A special counsel investigation to uncover the truth should be carried out as soon as possible," Democratic Party (DP) leader Jung Chung-rae said at a party leadership meeting in South Jeolla and Gwangju on Friday. "An investigation plan should be adopted as early as next week so a special investigation committee can be launched in the National Assembly immediately."

"A thorough investigation into the election commission debacle and accountability for those responsible are needed," People Power Party spokesperson Cho Yong-sool said in a statement. "There should be a fundamental review of the NEC's role and necessity."

The spokesperson also pressed the government and DP to accept an opposition-led special counsel.

Meanwhile, the election commission pushed back against allegations that it had destroyed ballot boxes that are subject to a court order to preserve evidence.

"What the Songpa election commission disposed of was not ballot boxes containing marked ballots but only the empty cardboard boxes used to transport ballots," it said.

"We simply handed the collected empty boxes to a disposal company on Tuesday, as originally scheduled. This was a normal procedure carried out before we received the court's evidence-preservation order, not a rushed disposal to destroy evidence."

BY YU SUNG-KUK [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]