PPP escalates election fraud claims, pushes for special prosecutor probe of presidential and general election vote-rate manipulation

The People Power Party is intensifying its offensive against the National Election Commission, moving beyond allegations of mismanagement during the June 3 local elections to raise claims of vote-rate manipulation in the 21st presidential election and the 22nd general election. The party has also characterized the incidents not as administrative failures but as outright "election fraud," stepping up pressure for a special prosecutor investigation.

Park Dae-chul, chairman of the PPP's special committee on investigating violations of civic voting rights in the June 3 elections and reforming election administration, said at the panel's final meeting at the National Assembly on Tuesday that newly uncovered evidence pointed to deliberate wrongdoing. "Intentional manipulation by specific individuals is not 'mismanagement' — it is 'fraud,'" Park said. "Now that entirely new allegations have come to light, the search and seizure warrants that were previously rejected must be reissued."

Park called for the swift launch of a special prosecutor investigation led by the opposition party, saying its scope must cover not only the June 3 local elections but also the computer systems and servers used in past elections. "A full-scale reform — amounting to a complete dismantling — of the NEC's organizational structure and its ballot-casting and counting systems is unavoidable," he said.

Rep. Ju Jin-woo of the PPP, a member of the National Assembly's special parliamentary investigation committee on the ballot shortage during the June 3 local elections, raised a series of allegations that voter turnout figures had been falsely entered during both the 21st presidential election and the 22nd general election.

In the presidential election, Ju said he had found evidence suggesting the NEC had arbitrarily manipulated turnout figures at a total of 109 polling stations — with some stations recording voter counts increasing in exact multiples of 100 per hour, and others showing zero increase over certain periods.

At a National Assembly press conference Monday, Ju said three polling stations in Hongeuн 2-dong, Seodaemun-gu recorded voter counts entered in multiples of 100 every hour. "It went up by 100 at 7 a.m., 100 at 8 a.m., 100 at 9 a.m., 200 at 10 a.m. — increasing in multiples of 100 for 11 consecutive hours," he said. "It is clear that false figures were entered into the server." The same pattern appeared in Uichang-gu, Changwon.

Ju also said as many as 90 polling stations recorded no increase in voter count whatsoever over certain periods. "In Nam-chon 1 precinct in Osan, Gyeonggi Province, 259 voters were added in one hour, then not a single person was added over the next three hours," he said. "In Segok-dong 1 precinct in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, 292 voters were recorded in one hour, followed by just two voters over the next two hours."

Turning to the general election, Ju said the number of voters added over a six-hour period was "200, 100, 0, 200, 100, 100 — an exact match across precincts." He said this meant precinct officials and senior NEC staff had colluded to make up and enter numbers at will.

He also presented another pattern: in Hagye 1-dong, hourly voter counts alternated between 150 and 200 — 150, 200, 150, 200, 150 — while in Nonhyeon 1-dong the figures cycled between 160 and 120 repeatedly.

The parliamentary investigation committee, whose mandate has been extended, plans to conduct a recount of 2.47 million ballots stored at the Jamsil counting center on Aug. 18. In response, Ju proposed to the Democratic Party that the two sides jointly reverify the computer servers before proceeding. "Given that manipulation allegations now extend to the presidential election, let's start with the servers — by bipartisan agreement," he said.