![People Power Party lawmaker Kim Eun-hye speaks to reporters at Polling Station No. 2 in Jamsil 7-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul, on Thursday morning, after the station extended voting hours due to a ballot shortage. [Newsis]](https://wimg.heraldcorp.com/news/cms/2026/06/04/news-p.v1.20260604.094b8668850b49189c35b28a3e9f3151_P1.jpg)
People Power Party lawmaker Kim Eun-hye, who visited Polling Station No. 2 in Jamsil 7-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul — one of the sites that extended voting hours due to a ballot shortage — called for the June 3 local elections to be declared invalid over the incident.
Kim said on her Facebook page Thursday that "the elections for Seoul mayor and other offices are already tainted and should be nullified."
She said ballot shortages occurred at 17 locations nationwide, including 12 in Seoul, and that the affected areas were predominantly ones where the People Power Party holds an advantage.
"In overseas dictatorships and authoritarian states, there are documented cases of election fraud in which ballots were deliberately distributed in smaller numbers to opposition-leaning areas to suppress voting," she said. "Dictators used control over ballot quantities as a tool to strip opponents of their right to vote and manipulate election outcomes."
Kim particularly cited the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, saying it "deliberately delayed or under-supplied ballots and voting equipment to polling stations in strongly anti-government areas, causing voters to give up and leave."
She said the tactic "served as a key means of manipulating turnout to suit the ruling power's interests," and warned that "if we let this ballot shortage on Thursday pass without action, South Korea itself will fall."
husn7@heraldcorp.com
