By Park Hye-won, The Herald Business
A court's effort to secure key physical evidence from a polling station where a ballot shortage occurred during the June 3 local elections has hit a wall after ballot storage boxes went missing from the site.
Judge Kim Ji-yeon of the Seoul Eastern District Court's Civil Division 51 visited the senior center of Woosung Apartment in Songpa-gu — which served as Jamsil 7-dong Polling Station No. 2 — at 3 p.m. Wednesday, spending 27 minutes attempting to secure evidence. The on-site inspection was attended by five officials from the Songpa-gu Election Commission as well as Kim Jeong-cheol, a supreme council member of the Reform Party who ran as a Seoul mayoral candidate, in his capacity as the applicant who filed the evidence preservation request.
The court left empty-handed. The Seoul Eastern District Court said in a press notice that it had convened the inspection "to confirm the condition of the ballot storage boxes and their packaging, and to seal and preserve them," but that "the inspection could not be carried out because the objects to be inspected were not present at the inspection site."
The court added that "if the location of the ballot storage boxes is identified through a future factual inquiry to the election commission, another inspection for the same purpose can be conducted."
Also missing from the senior center was the ballot storage box labeled "1,900 printed ballots" — the very item the court had ordered preserved the previous day. The election commission's position, as conveyed by officials, is that storage boxes for ballots — as distinct from ballot boxes — carry no legal retention requirement.
There is also a possibility that a third party removed the box. On June 5, after police removed the ballot boxes from the site, protesters and others forced their way in, creating chaos.
The ballot storage box the court sought to secure is considered key physical evidence of the election commission's mismanagement. On June 5, after police removed two ballot boxes from the Jamsil polling station following the close of voting, protesters searched through items the election commission had left behind.
The outside of a ballot storage box found at the scene was labeled "1,900 printed ballots, Box 1 of 1." The polling station had 3,856 registered voters, meaning ballots had been prepared for only 49.3 percent of eligible voters. Election guidelines require that ballots be printed for at least 50 percent of registered voters.
The court also included in its evidence preservation order closed-circuit television footage from 10 polling stations in Songpa-gu where ballot shortages occurred, covering the period from 8 a.m. on June 3 to 9 p.m. on June 5. Group chat logs, messenger records and text messages exchanged among election commission staff during the ballot shortage were also ordered preserved.
Speaking to reporters at the scene Wednesday, Kim said the ballot storage box "is the evidence showing that the election commission failed to meet even its own internal 50 percent standard," and announced plans to file an election complaint as early as June 15.
He added that, since the evidence sought was not at the site, "there is a possibility we will file an additional evidence preservation request for the ballot boxes at the counting center, depending on the response to the factual inquiry."
klee@heraldcorp.com
