Pre-voting for Confirmed and Quarantined Individuals May Become 'Blind Spot'... "Difficult to Aggregate Scale"

On the afternoon of the 5th, the second day of early voting for the 20th presidential election, a staff member wearing protective clothing received ballots from confirmed and quarantined voters at the Sangmu 1-dong early voting station set up at the Student Education and Culture Center in Seo-gu, Gwangju, and placed them into the ballot box.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Sumi] It appears difficult to accurately determine the exact number of COVID-19 confirmed cases and quarantined individuals who participated in early voting.

According to the Central Election Commission's election statistics system on the 6th, a total of 990,630 voters participated in early voting from 5 p.m. the day before, when voting for confirmed and quarantined individuals began, until the close of voting. This number includes general voters as well as confirmed and quarantined individuals who voted after 5 p.m.

The Election Commission stated that it is currently impossible to count how many of the 990,630 voters were confirmed or quarantined. This is because they did not receive separate lists of these individuals and voting was conducted by verifying voters within the 'Integrated Voter List System' that contains the entire electorate.

The process was conducted by having confirmed or quarantined individuals present the voting guidance text message received from the health center, fill out a self-identification confirmation form, and then election staff verified their voter status in the Integrated Voter List System before allowing them to vote.

The voter list does not separately mark individuals as 'confirmed' or 'quarantined.' This means it is not structured to identify them directly within the list system.

Some speculate that it might be possible to estimate the approximate number of confirmed and quarantined voters later through the self-identification confirmation forms filled out before voting.

However, even if a counting process is undertaken in the future, it is expected to take considerable time. There are 3,552 early voting stations, and the Election Commission is not currently compiling this data.

Previously, in the April 7 by-election, the government allowed quarantined individuals to vote only after prior application. Voting times were also separated after 8 p.m., and these votes were counted separately. The 21st general election was conducted in the same manner.

However, this time, due to the surge in confirmed cases, no prior application or separate list preparation procedures were followed.

Along with controversies over poor management of early voting stations for confirmed and quarantined individuals, the lack of transparency regarding the scale of these votes has raised concerns that it could become a political issue later. If the outcome of this 20th presidential election is narrowly decided, not only poor management controversies but also suspicions of fraudulent voting are likely to increase.

Meanwhile, a petition was posted on the Blue House (Cheong Wa Dae) National Petition Board requesting separate counting of votes from COVID-19 confirmed and quarantined individuals.

On the 5th, a post titled "We demand a separate announcement of the 2022 confirmed cases' votes count" was uploaded on the Blue House National Petition Board.

The petitioner stated, "Since voters did not directly place their ballots into the ballot box but election staff collected them, protests broke out in various places," and added, "Photos showing ballots being poorly managed in paper envelopes and delivery boxes are being uploaded on social networking services (SNS)."

They continued, "I hope this is false, but there are even claims that the identity verification process for confirmed voters was lax, allowing some to vote twice," and said, "I do not want to believe such things are happening in South Korea in 2022, especially in a presidential election."

The petitioner requested, "To alleviate the anxiety and distrust of many citizens, I ask for individual counting of confirmed cases' votes in this presidential election." They argued that if a significant discrepancy arises between the number of confirmed voters who participated and the number of confirmed voters' ballots, those votes should be invalidated and a re-vote conducted.

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