[Anchor]
The joint prosecution and police investigation headquarters, which is investigating the ballot paper shortage incident, has been conducting a raid on the National Election Commission (NEC) in Gwacheon and other locations since this morning. The authorities launched the compulsory investigation after capturing circumstances where NEC working-level officials allegedly entered false voter turnout rates in the recent local elections.
Reporter Jung Hye-jin has the details.
[Reporter]
The joint prosecution and police investigation headquarters to uncover the truth behind the infringement of citizens' right to vote has been raiding the Central Election Commission in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, as well as the district election commissions in Songpa-gu, Gangnam-gu, and Seocho-gu, since this morning (July 23).
It was understood that the search and seizure warrants include charges such as the falsification of official electronic records and obstruction of official duties.
The joint investigation headquarters stated that circumstances involving officials from the Central Election Commission and the Gyeonggi Provincial Election Commission entering false voter turnout rates in the recent local elections have been detected.
The headquarters is focusing its search and seizure operations particularly on individuals suspected of involvement in the false voter turnout entries.
Investigators suspect that instead of following the procedures—which require reporting any data entry errors to superiors and obtaining approval to modify the figures—working-level staff arbitrarily changed the numbers to manipulate election statistics.
Since its launch on June 9, the joint headquarters has carried out multiple searches and seizures related to the election commission. It is understood that the investigation was expanded after confirming circumstances of election-day voter statistics manipulation by working-level staff during the analysis of seized materials and questioning of related individuals.
It is reported that investigators have also secured messenger chat logs showing NEC employees conspiring to arbitrarily adjust figures to "match numbers" without reporting the misentries of voter counts to their superiors.
As soon as the analysis of the seized materials is completed, the joint headquarters plans to summon NEC employees to investigate the circumstances under which the voter turnout rates and other statistics were manipulated.
[Video Editing: Won Hyung-hee]
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