Seongnam Mayor Shin Sang-jin of the People Power Party called Monday for a thorough investigation into a ballot shortage on election day and a full review of the early voting system.
Shin added that if no effective solution can be found to address the problems exposed in early voting, the system should be abolished entirely.
"The situation in which voters were turned away on election day due to a shortage of ballots goes beyond an administrative disaster that violated citizens' right to vote — it is an alleged case of election fraud," Shin said. "The explanation that only enough ballots for 50 percent of voters were prepared is simply not credible. The exact number of ballots issued — comparing the quantity the National Election Commission ordered from the printer with the quantity actually received — must be made clear. If more than 50 percent of ballots had in fact been secured, the whereabouts of those excess ballots must be fully accounted for."
"If a parliamentary investigation or special prosecutor fails to get to the bottom of this, massive public resistance will be unavoidable," he said.
Shin said the incident was fueling sweeping doubts about electoral integrity, compounded by what he described as a lack of transparency in early voting management. "Across the country, including in Seongnam, vote tallies from both in-district and out-of-district early ballots showed votes disproportionately concentrated in a single party — a pattern that repeated itself," he said. "This is an abnormal trend that falls far outside the statistical margin of error."
He said even members of the public who do not subscribe to election fraud theories harbored serious doubts about whether the ballot shortage stemmed from mismanagement of early voting or manipulation of vote counts. "The National Election Commission appears to lack both the will and the ability to transparently explain the cause of the ballot shortage," he said.
"The entire process of transporting and storing early voting boxes must be rigorously verified," Shin added. "If public suspicions are not resolved, not only will the legitimacy of this election be in question — the country will face widespread public distrust and strong resistance toward all previous elections as well."
Shin won reelection in the local elections, defeating Democratic Party candidate Kim Byeong-uk. He is better known abroad than at home through 'Solomon's Choice,' giving him the highest global name recognition. He is continuing to pursue the Daejang-dong development scandal.
fob140@heraldcorp.com
