Supreme Court to Recount Ballots in Min Kyung-wook's April 15 General Election Invalidity Lawsuit

In the 21st General Election, Defeated by About 2,800 Votes... Min Kyung-wook Claims "Early Voting Was Manipulated"

[Asia Economy Reporter Bae Kyunghwan] The Supreme Court is set to conduct a recount to review the election invalidation lawsuit filed by former Future United Party (now People Power Party) lawmaker Min Kyung-wook, who claimed that the April 15 general election last year was rigged.

On the 28th, the Supreme Court's Special Division 2 (Presiding Justice Cheon Dae-yeop) will hold a verification hearing for the election invalidation lawsuit filed by former lawmaker Min against the Incheon Yeonsu District Election Commission at the Incheon District Court starting at 9:30 a.m.

Previously, former lawmaker Min ran for the 21st National Assembly election in Incheon Yeonsu-eul but lost to Jeong Il-young of the Democratic Party of Korea. At that time, Min received 49,913 votes, while Jeong received 52,806 votes, showing a difference of 2,893 votes.

Former lawmaker Min alleged that he was leading Jeong in the early stages of vote counting but lost after the early voting results were combined, raising suspicions of vote manipulation. He also claimed that rigging occurred not only in his constituency but throughout the April 15 general election and filed an election invalidation lawsuit in May last year.

The verification on this day will be conducted by manual recount and analysis of QR codes printed on early voting ballots. When the court declares the start of verification at 9:30 a.m., the transportation of verification materials such as ballots will begin, and from 10 a.m., the analysis of early voting QR codes will commence. The QR code analysis will be conducted by randomly selecting 100 early voting ballots marked for each of the four candidates who ran in Yeonsu-eul at the time and comparing the information contained in the QR codes with the QR code data held by the Central Election Commission.

After the analysis is completed, the full recount will begin. The recount will involve counting all approximately 127,000 votes cast again. The recount work is expected to be completed within the day, but the Supreme Court has not yet decided when to announce the recount results.

Meanwhile, the court held a preparatory hearing in October last year, listening to arguments from the legal representatives and the Election Commission and organizing the issues. Subsequently, the court partially accepted former lawmaker Min’s claim that it was necessary to investigate the Central Election Commission’s servers and proceeded with an on-site inspection. The on-site inspection was attended by the presiding justice, two expert advisors, and former lawmaker Min’s legal team.

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