Special Counsel: Vote Records Falsified at Polling Places Facing Ballot Shortages on National Election Commission Orders

The special counsel team led by Lee Tae-han, investigating the ballot shortage incident during the June 3 local elections, has launched a forced investigation after capturing allegations that the National Election Commission (NEC) fabricated and altered voting records, which are important official documents.

The special counsel team announced that, having grasped circumstances where voting records at polling places experiencing ballot shortages were retroactively fabricated and altered under the direction of the NEC, it deployed one special counsel assistant, four prosecutors, 14 forensic investigators, and 25 investigators to the NEC and the Seoul Election Commission at around 9:00 a.m. today (November 4) to conduct a seizure and search operation.

Voting records are official documents that record how voting proceeded at polling places on election day, including the management and issuance of ballots and voting conditions.

When local government officials acting on behalf of the election commission at polling places on election day draft voting records in capacities such as voting managers, these records must be sealed after counting and preserved until the term of the elected official ends.

The special counsel team has ascertained that during these local elections, "ballots without serial numbers," which lacked printed serial numbers due to the ballot shortage, were distributed to and actually used at around 140 polling places.

Under the Public Official Election Act, ballots must have serial numbers printed on them.

In addition, the special counsel team believes that anticipating accountability or lawsuits following the use of unnumbered ballots, the NEC instructed local election commissions at various levels to retroactively fill out voting records after the election and then compiled the results.

The local election commissions that received instructions from the NEC arbitrarily wrote down the serial numbers of the unnumbered ballots in the voting records or added contents to the special notes section, such as "anticipated a ballot shortage and requested countermeasures from the election commission" and "received unnumbered ballots."

The special counsel team explained that among the approximately 140 polling places nationwide that received unnumbered ballots due to shortages, at least 40 places were found to have such fabricated and altered voting records.

The fabricated and altered voting records were subsequently compiled by the NEC and are presumed to have been submitted as-is to the National Assembly and other entities even after the ballot shortage incident surfaced.

The fabrication and alteration of voting records is a newly discovered allegation by the election commission special counsel team, and the search and seizure warrant included charges of dereliction of duty.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.