Jeonbuk Election Commission Under Investigation for Allegedly Covering Up Missing 1,000+ Votes

The police have launched a full-scale investigation into allegations that the Jeonbuk Provincial Election Commission systematically attempted to cover up a data entry error involving over 1,000 votes during the vote-counting process of the last local election, despite being aware of the issue.

The Jeonbuk Provincial Police Agency is currently investigating officials from the Jeonbuk Provincial Election Commission on charges of issuing certificates of election while pretending there were no issues, despite having prior knowledge of the missing vote entries.

According to the police investigation, the Election Division of the Provincial Election Commission discovered on the morning of June 4, the day after the election, that the number of voters for the Jeonbuk Governor and Jeonbuk Superintendent of Education elections did not match, and began looking into the cause.

At the time, the Wansan-gu Election Commission confirmed that 1,104 votes were missing from the Jung-hwasan 1st polling station and 994 votes were double-counted at the 3rd polling station, and reported this urgently to the Provincial Election Commission via verbal communication.

However, the Provincial Election Commission secretariat submitted a false report to the plenary committee meeting held that afternoon, stating that "there were no irregularities in the vote-counting results." Based on this report, the committee certified the election results and issued certificates of election to the winners.

It is reported that even the chairperson of the Provincial Election Commission, a non-standing position, was only informed of the error on June 9, five days after it was discovered.

It is also alleged that after the suspicions regarding the vote-counting error were reported by the media, the Provincial Election Commission even attempted to fabricate the timeline to make it appear as if they had first learned of the facts on June 5, one day later.

The police suspect that officials in the election department, who were up for promotions, may have intentionally suppressed the incident out of fear of negative impacts on their personnel evaluations. The police plan to determine the extent of involvement from higher-ups by summoning officials from the Wansan-gu Election Commission.

Reported by Hyun-young Lee | Video by Na-on Kim | Graphics by Hye-min Yang | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.