Exclusive: Inside the Polling Station Where Election Management Collapsed

[Anchor]

Polling Station No. 2 in Jamsil 7-dong, Seoul, has become a symbol of the ballot shortage crisis caused by the National Election Commission's poor management. We have exclusively obtained 67 hours of CCTV footage from inside the polling station, which records the chaotic situation on the day of the local elections, June 3.

Reporter Son Hyeong-an reports.

[Reporter]

This is CCTV footage from inside Polling Station No. 2 in Jamsil 7-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul, on the day of the June 3 local elections.

While it may look calm on the surface, signs of trouble emerged around 2:33 p.m., when it was reported that fewer than 500 ballots remained.

However, there was only a request for additional ballots, and no sense of urgency was visible among the staff.

Then, after 4:30 p.m., with only an hour and a half left until voting closed, the staff began making urgent phone calls and explaining the situation to voters. At 4:46 p.m., voting was suspended.

Staff members gestured as if they needed to fill out documents by hand and distributed waiting tickets, but as the number of protesting citizens grew and chaos ensued, police were dispatched to the scene.

As the waiting line collapsed, staff members rushed out with safety lines. At 5:38 p.m., a man ran in carrying a paper envelope that appeared to contain additional ballots.

The National Election Commission initially stated that voting was suspended for 53 minutes and resumed at 5:39 p.m. However, the CCTV footage shows that voting actually resumed at 5:59 p.m., just one minute before the polls closed, marking a 20-minute discrepancy.

According to the voting records from that time, the first batch of 50 additional ballots was insufficient. Amid the confusion, a woman carrying a plastic bag ran into the polling station around 6:00 p.m.

This appears to be the second batch of 200 additional ballots recorded.

An elderly woman who arrived at the polling station around 4:45 p.m. was unable to vote due to the ballot shortage. Instead of going home, she sat on a chair and waited endlessly.

Although voting eventually resumed, she seemed to give up on waiting due to the long queue. It was only after an hour and 20 minutes that she finally exercised her right to vote and struggled to leave the polling station.

In effect, the threshold of voting, which should be accessible to everyone, became a barrier of hardship.

This CCTV footage was secured after Kim Jeong-cheol, a Supreme Council member of the Reform Party, filed a request with the court to preserve the evidence. The confirmed number of eligible voters at Polling Station No. 2 was 3,856, and the initial number of ballots distributed was 1,900.

(Video coverage: Ha Ryung | Video editing: Jung Yong-hwa | Design: Hwang Se-yeon)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.