The Songpa-gu election commission sounded early warnings about a ballot shortage on the morning of the June 3 local elections, but the Seoul Metropolitan Election Commission and the National Election Commission ignored those alerts for five hours before finally mounting a joint response, an investigation has found. The inquiry concluded that the commissions' complacency allowed the crisis to worsen.
Cho Hyeon-uk, chairman of the Ballot Shortage Truth-Finding Committee, held a briefing Monday after the panel's fourth meeting at the National Election Commission headquarters in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province. "We have determined that the Seoul Metropolitan Election Commission must be held strictly accountable for its complacent response and its failure to grasp the seriousness of the situation," he said.
According to the committee's findings, a Songpa-gu election commission employee anticipated a shortage of unnumbered ballots as early as 11:40 to 11:50 a.m. on election day and contacted the Seoul commission to ask about assigning serial numbers. That window represented a critical opportunity to avert a voting suspension, but the Seoul commission failed to recognize the gravity of what lay ahead.
The Seoul commission subsequently assigned a total of 1,000 additional serial numbers to Songpa-gu in two separate batches, yet serious reporting failures occurred throughout the process. Staff members handling the emergency never informed senior officials — including the standing commissioner or the secretary-general — leaving the commission's internal crisis-response system entirely dormant. The committee said the pattern of irresponsibility extended from frontline workers all the way up the chain of command.
Senior officials did not learn of the situation until 4:46 p.m., five hours after the first warnings from the field. Only after the Songpa-gu commission's administrative director called the Seoul commission's election division chief to say that ballots would be sent to polling stations without serial numbers did the Seoul commission finally recognize the severity of the crisis.
By then, it was too late. Some polling stations had run out of ballots entirely, forcing voting to halt in an unprecedented breakdown, as complaints flooded in from voters who had shown up to cast their ballots. "The Seoul Metropolitan Election Commission failed to grasp the situation despite repeated serial-number inquiries from the district commission and responded complacently, making the problem worse through its inappropriate handling," Cho said.
The National Election Commission did not receive field complaints or call the Seoul commission to check on the situation until after 5 p.m. — less than an hour before polls closed. Only at that point did the two bodies begin coordinating a joint response.
hwshin@heraldcorp.com
