Human Rights Commission: "Voting Rights for Visually Impaired Must Be Secured"

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Dong-hoon] On the 23rd, the National Human Rights Commission recommended the Chairperson of the National Election Commission to provide reasonable accommodations, including braille ballots, to ensure secret voting for visually impaired individuals.

Petitioner A, a person with severe visual impairment, requested the B regional election commission to provide accommodations such as braille ballots so that visually impaired individuals could vote alone during absentee voting (a type of absentee ballot where voting is done by mail without going directly to the polling station) in the 21st National Assembly election this year. However, in this election as well, visually impaired voters received regular absentee ballots and had to vote with the assistance of non-disabled persons. Petitioner A filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission, stating, "This undermines secret voting and constitutes discrimination against visually impaired people. I hope reasonable accommodations will be provided."

In response, the B regional election commission stated, "Braille voting aids are uniformly produced by the National Election Commission and distributed and placed at polling stations; they are not distributed to individuals who have registered for absentee voting."

The National Election Commission explained, "In the case of the National Assembly election, there are many candidates including proportional representatives across 253 constituencies nationwide, so after the candidate registration deadline, the ballots are printed first, and then braille is produced and delivered individually, which poses time constraints." They added, "Especially, to maintain uniformity of ballots, all are produced by a single designated company, making it difficult to produce braille election brochures simultaneously."

The Act on the Prohibition of Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities stipulates that the state, local governments, public election candidates, and political parties must not discriminate against persons with disabilities in exercising their political rights, including the right to vote, the right to be elected, and the right to petition.

The Human Rights Commission’s Disability Discrimination Remedy Committee stated, "The right to vote (political rights) is a fundamental mechanism to realize the constitutional principle of popular sovereignty and holds superior importance compared to other fundamental rights. For visually impaired individuals, access to election information is crucial for making proper judgments about candidates, and they must be able to access election information to actively express opinions and exercise political rights on an equal footing with non-disabled persons."

The Human Rights Commission judged, "Not providing braille ballots or voting aids to visually impaired individuals who applied for absentee voting constitutes a serious restriction on voting rights," and added, "If there is insufficient time to produce braille ballots or voting aids, measures such as extending the production period could be considered. Therefore, the lack of time to produce braille ballots cannot be regarded as a significantly unavoidable circumstance."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.