People Power Party lawmaker Kim Eun-hye holds a press conference at the National Assembly's media center on Tuesday to address a large-scale data entry error in which more than 3,600 voter counts were incorrectly entered within a single hour in Siheung, Gyeonggi Province, on the day of the June 3 local elections. [Yonhap]
People Power Party lawmaker Kim Eun-hye holds a press conference at the National Assembly's media center on Tuesday to address a large-scale data entry error in which more than 3,600 voter counts were incorrectly entered within a single hour in Siheung, Gyeonggi Province, on the day of the June 3 local elections. [Yonhap]

Eight additional districts have been found to have incorrectly entered voter counts on the day of the June 3 local elections, with the total number of manipulated tallies exceeding 40,000.

According to documents obtained from the National Election Commission by the office of People Power Party lawmaker Kim Eun-hye on Monday, voter count manipulation occurred in eight additional areas beyond the previously known cases in Gimpo, Uiwang, Jincheon and Siheung. The newly identified areas include Seoul's Seongbuk-gu and Yongsan-gu, Incheon's Michuhol-gu and Geomdan-gu, North Chungcheong Province's Jeungpyeong-gun and South Chungcheong Province's Dangjin.

The Seongbuk-gu election commission, during its 8 a.m. voter count report on election day, added only one of 20 precincts — Seokgwan-dong, with 1,520 voters — to the previous hour's figure of 6,007, reporting a total of 7,527 and omitting 7,530 votes. Rather than correcting the error for the affected time slot and polling stations, the commission arbitrarily added the missing voters to the 9 a.m. report, submitting a total of 24,480 voters.

In Yongsan-gu, the election commission omitted the voter counts for three precincts — Yongsan 2-ga-dong, Namyeong-dong and Ichon 1-dong, totaling 2,235 voters — from its 9 a.m. report, submitting only 8,758. Instead of correcting the 9 a.m. figure, the commission arbitrarily folded the missing 2,235 voters into the 10 a.m. report, submitting a total of 17,022.

In Incheon's Michuhol-gu, the election commission omitted some precinct voter counts totaling 5,998 from its 8 a.m. report and arbitrarily added them to the 9 a.m. submission. In Geomdan-gu, the commission omitted the Ara 1-dong voter count of 3,865 from its 11 a.m. report and arbitrarily included it in the noon submission.

In Cheongju's Cheongwon-gu, a total of 21,913 votes were omitted from some precinct reports across the noon-to-2 p.m. and 4-to-5 p.m. time slots. Rather than correcting the figures, the commission arbitrarily shifted them into subsequent time slots. Similar irregularities — in which incorrectly entered voter counts were not properly corrected but instead moved to different time slots — were also confirmed in North Chungcheong Province's Jeungpyeong-gun and Okcheon-gun, and in South Chungcheong Province's Dangjin.

Kim said the incidents amounted to far more than the human error or isolated lapses the National Election Commission had previously cited. "Tens of thousands of voter counts that a constitutional body publicly reports to citizens in real time were entered incorrectly nationwide, and then concealed by arbitrarily shifting them to different time slots — this is clear election manipulation and criminal conduct, well beyond what the commission has tried to explain away," she said.

She added that investigators must determine whether the manipulation was limited to the public reporting system or extended to the core database used to manage vote counting and tabulation operations. "The special prosecutor must launch a thorough investigation into all servers and original log files," she said.


mp1256@heraldcorp.com