Songpa-gu ran out of ballots from noon on election day; queue tickets varied even within the same polling station; extended voting cutoff times differed from site to site
Controversy is growing over the uneven application of National Election Commission guidelines on extended voting for waiting voters, after ballot shortages at some polling stations in Seoul's Songpa-gu, Gangnam-gu and other districts during the June 3 local elections left voters unable to cast their ballots.
According to documents the NEC submitted to the office of People Power Party lawmaker Seo Beom-su of the National Assembly's Public Administration and Security Committee, the Songpa-gu election commission first discussed how to respond to the ballot shortage at around 11:58 a.m. on election day. Measures such as sending additional ballots to Polling Station No. 7 in Jamsil 4-dong began around 2:20 p.m., but evidence has emerged that guidelines on extended voting for waiting voters were applied inconsistently across polling stations.
The election operations center did not relay instructions to the Songpa-gu commission — telling it to keep waiting voters in line until ballots arrived and then allow them to vote — until around 5:55 p.m., just minutes before polls were set to close.
At 6:20 p.m., after the official closing time, the operations center confirmed ballot shortages at 10 polling stations in Songpa-gu, one in Gangnam-gu and one in Gwangjin-gu. One of those stations, Polling Station No. 2 in Munjeong 2-dong, ended extended voting for waiting voters at 6:25 p.m. — just five minutes after the operations center became aware of the situation.
The polling station manager, who identified himself as a Songpa-gu district office employee commissioned by the NEC, told waiting voters who protested the early closure that extended voting had been set to run only until 6:25 p.m. and that cutoff times varied by station.
As a result, numerous voters were left unable to cast their ballots.
Kim Min-ji, 58, a resident of Munjeong 2-dong, said no one properly informed voters how long the extended voting period would last. She said she filed a complaint with the NEC over what she called an unreasonably short window given to voters who had already received queue tickets.
Park So-jeong, 27, said she arrived at the polling station around 4:40 p.m. and left after a station official told her that holding a queue ticket meant she could vote that day — Tuesday. "But the station closed at just 6:25 p.m., so I ultimately couldn't vote," she said. A 42-year-old surnamed Park, who did manage to vote after receiving a queue number, said an announcement over the complex's public address system came only after 6 p.m. to say the station would close at 6:25. "I dropped everything and rushed over," he said.
By contrast, Polling Stations No. 5 and No. 6 in Jamsil 2-dong extended voting until 7:35 p.m. and 8:03 p.m., respectively, while Polling Station No. 2 in Jamsil 7-dong — the latest of all — kept voting open until 10 p.m. Critics say the episode exposed a complete absence of consistent guidelines on extended voting hours across stations that ran short of ballots.
Even within the same polling station, voters received queue tickets in different forms. One ticket, marked "voter who arrived by closing time," bore an official stamp from the polling manager, while another had only a handwritten queue number with no stamp.
A 57-year-old surnamed Kim, who voted at the station after 6 p.m., said he cast his ballot using a queue ticket he picked up off the ground after another voter had discarded it. The polling manager also allowed some voters to vote without verifying that they had actually received a queue ticket, after they complained.
The NEC attributed the crisis to its own failure to track remaining ballot supplies at individual stations as turnout climbed higher than expected on election day.
In a press release Monday, the NEC said ballot shortages had occurred at 140 polling stations nationwide on local election day, including those in Songpa-gu — 73 more than the figure it announced Friday. Twenty-six stations had to suspend voting due to shortages before resuming once new supplies arrived. A fact-finding committee to investigate the unprecedented nationwide ballot shortage is set to begin operation Wednesday.
arin@heraldcorp.com
