Abandoned Votes 300,000... Larger Than the Vote Difference Between Yoon and Lee

Vote Counting Completed at 6:18 AM on the 10th

Vote counting is underway at the counting center set up at Mapo-gu Community Sports Center in Seoul on the 9th, the day of the 20th presidential election. Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Hyun-joo] As the counting of the 20th presidential election has been completed, it has been revealed that the number of invalid votes reached about 300,000. The political circles attribute this to the last-minute unification and withdrawal of candidates Ahn Cheol-soo, leader of the People’s Party, and Kim Dong-yeon, leader of the New Wave.

The counting for this presidential election was completed at 6:18 a.m. on the 10th, just 10 hours after it began. Out of a total of 44,197,692 registered voters, 34,067,853 participated, and among them, the number of invalid votes was counted at 307,542. This is more than twice the invalid votes of 135,733 in the 19th presidential election and 126,838 in the 18th presidential election.

This number even exceeds the vote difference between President-elect Yoon Seok-yeol and Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Party presidential candidate. According to the National Election Commission, Yoon Seok-yeol’s final vote count was 16,394,815 (48.56%), and Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party received 16,147,738 votes (47.83%), with a vote difference of 247,077 between the two.

It is analyzed that this is largely due to the last-minute candidate unification that took place after the printing of the ballots. Kim Dong-yeon declared unification with candidate Lee on the 2nd, and Ahn Cheol-soo declared unification with President-elect Yoon on the 3rd, withdrawing their candidacies. Early voting used ballots printed on-site, where the word “withdrawn” was marked in black ink next to their names, but for the main voting, pre-printed ballots were used without such markings.

There is also analysis that invalid votes for these two candidates appeared in overseas voting. According to the National Election Commission, from the 23rd to the 28th of last month, out of 226,162 overseas voters in 115 countries (177 diplomatic missions) and 219 polling stations, 161,878 participated, recording a turnout rate of 71.6%.

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