'If I were Oh Se-hoon, I would declare a by-election,' lawmaker says

People Power Party lawmaker Na Kyung-won (center) holds a press conference at the National Assembly's media center on Friday regarding the ballot shortage crisis in the June 3 local elections. [Yonhap]
People Power Party lawmaker Na Kyung-won (center) holds a press conference at the National Assembly's media center on Friday regarding the ballot shortage crisis in the June 3 local elections. [Yonhap]

People Power Party lawmaker Na Kyung-won said Friday that if she were Seoul Mayor-elect Oh Se-hoon, she would go straight to Olympic Park in Jamsil and declare a by-election over the ballot shortage crisis that marred the June 3 local elections.

Speaking at a press conference at the National Assembly, Na said the election commission's failures and irregularities were continuing to come to light. "Constituencies where problems occurred must hold by-elections without exception," she said.

Na argued that the constitutional violation of blocking voters from exercising their right to vote could not be overlooked simply because the number of disenfranchised voters was not large enough to change the outcome. "The validity of an election rests not on the resulting vote margin but on the constitutional legitimacy of the process," she said.

She added that the current Public Official Election Act allows an election to be invalidated only when a violation is found to have affected the outcome. She called that standard a "cruel contradiction" that forces voters denied the chance to cast a ballot to prove after the fact that the error made a difference, even though the fault lay with the election commission.

Na also said she had introduced a bill to amend the Public Official Election Act that would allow elections to be voided in whole or in part, regardless of the outcome, when voters are denied their right to vote due to fault on the part of the election commission.


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