Rep. Lee Hyung-seok: "Overseas Voting Rate Halved Due to COVID-19... Non-Face-to-Face Methods Must Be Introduced"

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Yoon Jamin] Due to the impact of COVID-19, the overseas voter turnout in the 21st National Assembly general election held on April 15th dropped by nearly half.

According to data submitted by the Central Election Commission to Representative Lee Hyung-seok (Democratic Party of Korea, Gwangju Buk-gu Eul) on the 12th, the overseas voter turnout in general elections has declined three times consecutively since the introduction of overseas voting in 2009.

In particular, the overseas voter turnout in this year's National Assembly election was 23.8%, which is almost half compared to the previous general election turnout of 41.4%.

The overseas voting system allows Korean nationals residing abroad to vote at overseas diplomatic missions after prior application. This year, the overseas voter turnout sharply declined due to the impact of COVID-19.

In fact, the global spread of COVID-19 caused many diplomatic missions to be unable to operate polling stations, and some countries restricted movement to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

The 21st general election planned to set up polling stations at 176 diplomatic missions in 117 countries, but this year only 85 diplomatic missions in 62 countries operated polling stations (including additional and alternative polling stations totaling 91 locations), and 91 diplomatic missions had to suspend overseas election affairs. Compared to the 20th general election, when 198 overseas polling stations were operated at 169 diplomatic missions, only about half the number of polling stations were established.

Except for countries like the United States, Japan, and China, most countries had only one or two polling stations per country, making it difficult for voters to travel to diplomatic missions, resulting in a low application rate below 10%. This year, the overseas voting application rate was 8%, meaning even voters who applied in advance were unable to exercise their voting rights.

Therefore, there have been increasing calls to consider various non-face-to-face voting methods, including mail-in voting, which had been previously suggested.

Among these, the introduction of the 'electronic fax' system for shipboard voting this year attracted attention.

According to the Public Official Election Act, seafarers can vote using fax devices. The newly introduced electronic fax system allows seafarers to access the seafarer voting website from their ship and upload scanned files of their ballots.

The uploaded ballots are submitted through Shield Fax installed at the city and provincial election commissions (a sealing device is applied before the transmitted ballots are printed). Although called fax, its nature is closer to online voting.

Representative Lee Hyung-seok said, “The current overseas voting system has limitations in broadly guaranteeing voting rights due to high costs and the constraints of long-distance travel. We need to resolve technical issues and reach social consensus to introduce non-face-to-face voting methods such as mail-in voting, the election commission’s online voting system K-Voting, and the electronic fax system introduced this year into overseas elections.”

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