Participation in Referendums from Age 18... Introduction of Online Requests and Electronic Voting

The Amendment Bills on Resident Referendum Act and Resident Recall Act Passed at the Cabinet Meeting

[Asia Economy Reporter Jo In-kyung] The voting age for participating in resident referendums and recall votes will be lowered from 19 to 18 years old, and online signature petitions will also become possible.

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety announced that the amendments to the 'Resident Referendum Act' and the 'Act on Resident Recall' containing these changes were passed at the Cabinet meeting on the 22nd.

The resident referendum and recall vote systems, introduced and operated in 2004 and 2007 respectively, have faced criticism for having high institutional barriers due to difficulties in meeting vote counting and confirmation requirements. Accordingly, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety prepared improvement measures to lower the threshold for resident participation by expanding the scope of resident referendums and recall votes and relaxing the vote counting and confirmation requirements to better align with the original purpose of resident participation systems.

The amendment first lowers the voting age for resident (recall) votes from the current 19 to 18 years old, in accordance with revisions to the Public Official Election Act.

The petition requirements for resident recall votes are relaxed depending on the scale of eligible petitioners, and the confirmation requirement for resident referendums is eased from at least one-third to at least one-quarter of the total number of eligible voters, allowing residents' intentions to be more easily reflected.

Additionally, to enable residents to participate in petitioning for resident referendums without spatial or temporal constraints, online signature petitions are introduced, and a legal basis for conducting electronic voting exclusively for resident referendums has been established.

Resident referendums will abolish the vote counting requirement to ensure careful policy formulation and execution based on the voting results and to guarantee residents' right to know. Furthermore, the scope of resident referendums has been expanded so that major decisions of local governments can be subject to resident referendums by law without requiring delegation through ordinances.

Moreover, for resident recall votes, in line with the introduction of an online petition system and the spread of non-face-to-face culture, signature solicitation activities using information and communication networks (such as text messages, internet websites, telephones, etc.) will be allowed, expanding beyond the current verbal-only signature requests.

Lee Jae-young, Vice Minister of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, stated, "For the development of local autonomy, harmony and balance between the current representative democracy and direct resident participation systems are necessary," adding, "The amendments to the Resident Referendum Act and the Resident Recall Act will strengthen the accountability of heads of local governments and local councils to residents and serve as an opportunity to further mature local autonomy."

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