▲ National Election Commission
It has been found that the National Election Commission (NEC) secured sufficient budget for printing ballots for the June 3 local elections but reduced the actual volume of printed ballots to about half of the budgeted amount.
According to data submitted by the NEC to Representative Song Eon-seok of the People Power Party today (June 17), the commission required local governments nationwide to secure ballot printing budgets based on "110% of the number of eligible voters," totaling 14.51957 billion won. However, it was revealed that only 8.20498 billion won, or 56.5% of the allocated budget, was actually spent.
By region, the budget execution rate for ballot printing was highest in Ulsan at 90.3%, followed by Jeju (79.2%), South Gyeongsang (75.2%), Gangwon (71.7%), and Daejeon (71.1%), all of which exceeded 70%.
On the other hand, regions such as Seoul (55.0%), Gyeonggi (55.1%), Gwangju (48.4%), Incheon (48.2%), Busan (46.6%), Daegu (36.8%), and Sejong (27.2%) fell below the national average execution rate of 56.5%.
The execution of the budget was also found to be haphazard.
Cases were discovered where the volume of printed ballots decreased significantly because the unit price for printing contracts differed from the unit price used during budget planning.
In the case of Songpa-gu, Seoul, where a shortage of ballots occurred intensively during this election, the printing unit price for the district head election was set at 30 won per sheet during budget planning, but it was actually applied at 45 won per sheet, which is 50% more expensive.
For instance, a total of 12.72 million won was spent on the printing budget for the Songpa-gu head election. If the unit price from the budget planning (30 won per sheet) had been applied, it would have been possible to print a total of 424,200 ballots, which is approximately 75% of the number of voters in Songpa-gu (565,368).
However, as the Songpa-gu Election Commission applied a printing unit price of 45 won per sheet, the final printing volume was limited to 280,800 sheets.
Conversely, there were also cases where the actual expenditure for ballot printing exceeded the initial budget.
For the Yeongdeungpo-gu head election in Seoul, 11.05 million won was allocated for the ballot printing budget, but an additional 2.25 million won was spent, totaling 13.3 million won.
It was also found that the Seocho-gu head election in Seoul spent 410,000 won more than the allocated amount.
Representative Song stated, "It has been confirmed that the NEC secured sufficient budget but arbitrarily reduced the printing volume, and that contract unit prices and execution details varied wildly by region," adding, "We must thoroughly investigate whether there were any illegalities in the entire process of budget planning, execution, and contract signing through a parliamentary investigation and a special counsel."
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.