민주주의의 근간을 흔드는 숫자 놀음: 선관위의 잇따른 개표 참사 > K-wave Trends

The Gyeonggi Provincial Election Commission recently officially acknowledged a serious input error that occurred during the vote counting process for the elections for superintendents of education in Jungwon-gu, Seongnam-si, and Gwangju-si. At the 3rd polling station in Geumgwang 2-dong, Jungwon-gu, Seongnam-si, an absurd situation occurred where the vote numbers for candidates Ahn Min-seok and Lim Tae-hee were announced with the exact opposite results. This is because, due to the nature of the superintendent election, there is no symbol and the order of candidates determined by lottery varies depending on the type of ballot (Type A, Type B), but the National Election Commission overlooked this and entered data according to the default settings in the system. As a result, the originally announced figures and the actual number of votes differed, and the system that was supposed to ensure election fairness became the main culprit in producing errors.

The error that occurred in Chowol-eup, Gwangju City suggests further systematic mismanagement. When the vote counting clerk incorrectly entered the results from the 9th polling station into the 2nd polling station, the system showed a fatal flaw in that it reflected the already entered data in duplicate without correcting it. As a result, the number of voters at the second polling station in Chowol-eup showed a large gap with the actual number of voters, resulting in the vote in the area evaporating or being distorted. The National Election Commission belatedly corrected this through a thorough inspection of the vote count records, but this kind of follow-up approach appears to be insufficient to restore the credibility of the election, which has already been damaged.

Gyeonggi Province Superintendent of Education Lim Tae-hee expressed a strong stance that this incident cannot be dismissed as simply an administrative mistake. He pointed out the gross lack of election management and strongly demanded that the National Election Commission immediately disclose all election-related information in a transparent manner and undergo rigorous verification. Furthermore, he emphasized that this incident is a problem of protecting the Constitution that shakes the foundation of democracy, and raised his voice for the need for a comprehensive inspection of procedures, including a recount, beyond a simple correction of numbers. As there is already a precedent of valid votes being incorrectly treated as invalid during past National Assembly elections, fundamental doubts about the National Election Commission's management capabilities are growing further.

The National Election Commission's negligence is not limited to ballot counting input errors. Loopholes in voting and vote counting management are being discovered throughout the field, such as the Seoul National Election Commission's blanket downward adjustment of the guidelines for distributing spare ballots without serial numbers. These series of incidents evidenced structural flaws in the overall election management system and exposed the absence of a manual and the incompetence of the verification system. Even after the election, the public cannot shake off the anxiety that their vote might have been counted incorrectly, and this is shaking the value of the electoral system, which is called the flower of democracy, to its roots.