Ballot shortage probe: Unnumbered ballots supplied at one-tenth of required level, panel says

Unnumbered backup ballots — used when polling stations run short of regular ballots — were distributed to Songpa-gu at only one-tenth of the quantity required under election regulations during the June 3 local elections, a fact-finding panel has determined.

Cho Hyeon-uk, chair of the Committee to Investigate the Truth Behind the Ballot Shortage, said at a briefing Thursday following a meeting at the National Election Commission's Gwacheon office in Gyeonggi Province that Songpa-gu's election commission should have received 17,000 unnumbered ballots but was given only 2,000.

Under the official elections procedure manual, unnumbered reserve ballots must be printed at roughly 3 percent above the registered voter count. For Songpa-gu, with 564,438 registered voters, that 3 percent figure works out to 17,000 sheets.

Cho said that in previous elections, unnumbered ballots had been distributed at around the 3 percent level, but the Seoul Metropolitan Election Commission had instructed district-level commissions within its jurisdiction to print only 2,000 sheets.

The panel also found that the election commission's response during the shortage was inadequate. Because no manual existed to guide staff through a ballot shortage scenario, temporarily assigned workers were left scrambling with no clear direction.

Cho said the additional ballots rushed to Songpa-gu turned out to be a mix of unnumbered ballots held in reserve by the commission and serialized ballots borrowed from nearby polling stations, with unnumbered ballots accounting for 70 percent of the total.

He added that a review of chat logs involving Songpa-gu election commission staff, committee secretaries and clerks confirmed that the commission failed to respond swiftly despite severe on-site chaos caused by the shortage. The absence of any manual on how to assign serial numbers to unnumbered ballots, he said, led to serious confusion and voting delays.

Cho said he felt a strong need for systemic reform and that Friday's meeting would focus closely on the Songpa-gu situation.

Meanwhile, the joint prosecution-police investigative task force raided the National Election Commission's Gwacheon headquarters and six other offices Thursday in connection with the ballot shortage during the June 3 nationwide local elections. The searches covered seven locations in total, including the National Election Commission, the Seoul Metropolitan Election Commission, and the district election commissions of Songpa-gu, Seocho-gu, Gangnam, Gwangjin-gu and Dongjak-gu.