"Baseless claims of civil servant mobilization damage the honor of public service"
Gwangyang city has rebuffed allegations raised by a candidate's camp that civil servants were mobilized to leak voter rolls and conduct illegal election activities, calling the claims outright false.
The city issued a press release Monday saying that voter rolls are prepared and managed under a robust security system in strict compliance with applicable laws, making any unauthorized leak or subsequent reprocessing of the kind alleged "technically and administratively impossible."
Under the Public Official Election Act, voter rolls for the main election day are compiled after early voting closes through a standardized electronic system operated by the election commission. Individual local government civil servants cannot arbitrarily extract or copy the rolls, or sort out only those eligible for the main vote and pass that information to outside parties, the city said.
"We express deep concern that, without any basis whatsoever, the provocative claim that 'civil servants and others were mobilized' has cast Gwangyang city officials — who work tirelessly day and night to administer a fair election — as potential criminals," a city official said.
Earlier, the election campaign headquarters of some candidates opened a public tip-off channel, citing reports of a possible illegal scheme in which civil servants were allegedly mobilized after early voting to leak voter rolls, reprocess a list of those eligible for the main vote, and deliver it to a specific campaign.
parkds@heraldcorp.com
