Local election commissions submitted 81 corrected voter-count reports to the National Election Commission during last year's presidential election, according to Yonhap. The figure was 65 during the 2024 general election.
The data comes from NEC computer-correction logs for the 21st presidential election, obtained by the office of People Power Party lawmaker Ju Jin-woo. The records show the NEC received 81 error-correction reports from district, city and county election commissions nationwide. Most errors occurred when individual polling stations submitted hourly voter counts and entered incorrect figures.
Among the specific cases, the Gangnam-gu Election Commission in Seoul entered the vote count for Sinsa-dong Polling Station No. 5 as 1,994 instead of the correct 1,294, and made two separate data-entry errors requiring subsequent corrections.
The Songpa-gu Election Commission in Seoul had its figures corrected three times. In Busan's Yeongdo-gu, a correction request was filed after a precinct's vote count went unreported.
In Wonju, Gangwon Province, a tally of 105,455 votes was corrected to 105,555. In Yangyang, Gangwon Province, an accidental press of the "report" button caused an incorrect voter count to be submitted.
In Hadong, South Gyeongsang Province, votes for a specific time slot were not entered at all, leaving the count at zero before it was later corrected to 65. In Gunpo, Gyeonggi Province, the voter count for Gunpo 1-dong polling station was entered as 2,590 instead of the correct 2,490.
The 65 correction cases from the 2024 general election were also tallied across election commissions nationwide.
The Danwon-gu Election Commission in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, mistakenly entered the number of remaining ballots instead of ballots issued, requiring a correction. In Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, out-of-precinct voter counts were omitted.
In Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, a proportional-representation vote count of 28,944 was entered as 28,994. In Gwonseon-gu, Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, a missing progress update for a specific precinct caused a voter-count error.
The Sejong Election Commission omitted the vote count for Jeonui-myeon and corrected it later. Election commissions in Osan, Gyeonggi Province, and Dong-gu, Incheon, entered cumulative figures for specific precincts instead of the correct counts and corrected the errors belatedly.
In some cases, corrections were not made until more than 12 hours after the initial report. In Okjeong 2-dong, Yangju, Gyeonggi Province, a voter count reported at 7 a.m. was not corrected until after 7 p.m.
In Uiwang, Gyeonggi Province, a voter count reported at 7 a.m. was corrected about 11 hours later at 6 p.m. In Boseong, South Jeolla Province, a count reported at noon was corrected five hours later.
"This newly confirms that voter counts were revised after the fact in both the general election and the presidential election," Ju said. "Now that the special prosecutor act for the NEC has passed, the right person must be appointed to restore the public's damaged right to political participation and to investigate all past elections without exception."
Meanwhile, the ruling and opposition parties have agreed on a special prosecutor act targeting the National Election Commission and decided to extend the mandate of the parliamentary special committee on NEC investigation by one month. The committee, formed following a ballot shortage controversy, had its original deadline extended from Sept. 1 to Sept. 30. On Thursday afternoon, the committee tentatively agreed to hold a hearing and conduct an on-site recount verification at a Songpa-gu vote-counting center on Aug. 18. A plenary session is scheduled for Aug. 28 to adopt a progress report on the parliamentary investigation and vote on referrals for prosecution of witnesses who failed to appear or committed perjury.
cook@heraldcorp.com
