"This Isn't Rationing, What Is It?"... Ballot Paper Shortage Leads to Distribution of Unnumbered Ballots

[Anchor]

The National Election Commission's (NEC) fact-finding committee announced its interim investigation results today (June 12) regarding the cause of the recent ballot paper shortage. The investigation found that the Songpa-gu Election Commission in Seoul experienced delays while manually writing serial numbers on "unnumbered" reserve ballots that needed to be deployed. Eventually, they began sending ballots to polling stations without even filling in the numbers. It was found that this caused confusion at the polling stations, where staff had to manually write in the serial numbers on the ballots they received. While the acting chairman of the NEC described the incident as a "painful mistake," the fact-finding committee concluded that it was a case of systemic failure.

Reporter Park Chan-beom has the story.

[Reporter]

The interim investigation results from the NEC's fact-finding committee regarding the situation at the Songpa-gu Election Commission on June 3, when the ballot shortage was most severe, are as follows.

At 11:50 a.m. on that day,

A Songpa-gu Election Commission official, concerned about a potential shortage, requested serial numbers from the Seoul Metropolitan Election Commission to deploy "unnumbered reserve ballots."

Starting at 1:40 p.m., Songpa-gu Election Commission staff began the process of writing serial numbers on the unnumbered ballots.

At 2:20 p.m.,

Ballots with serial numbers began to be sent to polling stations sequentially, but by 4:00 p.m., the stations were already running out of ballots.

[Noh Won-seop / Voter in Songpa-gu, Seoul: I asked the election official why only 100 ballots arrived, and they didn't even give me a proper answer...]

At 4:46 p.m.,

Voting began to be suspended at locations such as the Jamsil 7-dong No. 2 Polling Station.

Around that time, the Songpa-gu Election Commission's manual process of writing serial numbers on the reserve ballots had reached its limit.

[Cho Hyun-wook / Chairman of the NEC Fact-Finding Committee: Due to simultaneous requests for ballots, it became impossible to continue assigning serial numbers to the unnumbered ballots.]

Eventually, at 5:05 p.m.,

The Songpa-gu Election Commission had no choice but to send ballots without serial numbers to the polling stations.

This forced the on-site poll managers to step in and urgently begin writing the numbers by hand.

[Voter in Songpa-gu, Seoul: This isn't rationing, what is it?]

At 5:09 p.m.,

Even the unnumbered ballots were nearly exhausted.

From that point on, they began borrowing remaining ballots from other polling stations, but the number of voters who were unable to cast their ballots had already grown uncontrollably.

[Voter in Songpa-gu, Seoul: No, the polls close at 6:00 p.m., what are you going to do about this?]

In the case of the Jamsil 7-dong No. 2 Polling Station, the voting deadline had to be extended to 10:00 p.m.

[Voter in Songpa-gu, Seoul: I have a waiting ticket, why can't I vote now?]

The fact-finding committee stated, "Because all Songpa-gu Election Commission staff were mobilized to write serial numbers on the ballots and deliver them personally, they were unable to respond to the crisis or provide systematic reports."

[Cho Hyun-wook / Chairman of the NEC Fact-Finding Committee: They even mobilized administrative assistants and social service agents to deliver the ballots...]

While Wi Chul-hwan, the acting chairman of the NEC, described the failure in ballot distribution as a "painful mistake" yesterday (June 11), the fact-finding committee diagnosed it today as a "total failure where the oversight committee's command authority over the field was never exercised."

(Video reporting: Lee Seung-hwan, Shin Dong-hwan, Kim Seung-tae | Video editing: Jeon Min-gyu | Graphics: Im Chan-hyuk, Jeon Yu-geun)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.