A Healthy Person Marked as Deceased and Missing Ballots... "This Is the First Time We've Seen Such Early Voting"

Misclassification of Deceased Due to System Error
Police Dispatched Amid Outraged Citizens
Torn Ballots Declared Invalid
Repeated Verification Chaos
Election Commission's Poor Management and Delayed Explanation Controversy

[Image source=Yonhap News]

On the 5th, when early voting for the 20th presidential election was underway, a report call came into the 112 Comprehensive Security Situation Room. It was from the Yeongtong 3-dong early voting station in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province. The report stated that a citizen was causing a disturbance due to a computer system error. Police officers from the nearby precinct were dispatched. Upon arrival, the scene was exactly as reported. A citizen was angrily protesting something to the election staff.

The responding officers listened to the citizen's story. "I came to vote early, but I was listed as deceased. When I asked what was going on, the Administrative Welfare Center (formerly the community service center) and the Election Commission kept passing responsibility to each other without any explanation, leaving me waiting for an hour." After receiving this on-site consultation, the police calmed the citizen down and sent them home. The citizen was only able to return to the polling station and cast their precious vote that afternoon after the local district office corrected the death report and the voter registry error.

This case, where a living voter almost lost their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote, illustrates how poorly managed the early voting process was during the two days starting from the 4th. On the morning of the 7th, two days after early voting ended, the newspaper’s reporters met with citizens who unanimously said, "I've never seen such a voting process in my life," and "Even elementary school class president elections aren't conducted like this."

The Election Commission’s management failures were especially concentrated during the early voting process for COVID-19 confirmed and quarantined individuals. From 5 p.m. on the 5th, confirmed and quarantined voters were allowed to visit early voting stations with official permission to go out. To separate confirmed cases from others, the Election Commission had election staff collect the ballots directly from these voters instead of having them place ballots into the ballot box themselves.

However, controversy arose when some ballot collection envelopes provided to voters already contained marked ballots. At the Manchon 1-dong polling station in Daegu, a citizen received a ballot that had already been marked, prompting police intervention. The citizen protested to the police, saying, "How can I trust this? Isn't this election fraud?" Similar reports were filed with the police in Yeonsan 4-dong, Busan, and Sinsa 1-dong, Eunpyeong-gu, Seoul.

The Election Commission stated that this was a "simple mistake caused by reusing ballot envelopes." This explanation was far from sufficient to convince the public. Some citizens also worried about lost ballots. Their fears were fueled when an incident occurred at the Gwanggyo 2-dong early voting station in Suwon’s Gwanggyo New Town. It was confirmed after opening the out-of-district ballot box that one ballot was missing compared to the number issued. Despite multiple late-night checks of the number of ballots issued and the number of return envelopes, one ballot was still missing. The missing ballot was tentatively concluded, and the police responsible for transporting the ballot boxes began reporting the issue. Reports were sequentially sent from the precinct to the police station and then to the provincial police agency.

Meanwhile, the local Election Commission was unaware of this fact until the next morning. Even when interviewed by the newspaper, they maintained that it was "news to them." One official said, "That did not happen," and "The number of ballots issued and the number of return envelopes match in the system." However, a subsequent Election Commission investigation confirmed the ballot shortage was indeed true. They explained it happened during the invalidation process when a ballot was torn due to a voter's carelessness. An Election Commission official said, "Out-of-district voters receive ballots at the early voting station, and that number is recorded in the system. The reason the system shows the same number of ballots and envelopes is because of this."

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