Internal Bulletin Board Reveals: "One Person Managing Over 100 Locations, Overwhelmed"

[Anchor]

Moving on to the next story. We checked the internal bulletin board of the National Election Commission (NEC) to see what employees think about the ballot paper shortage. Posts pointed out the massive workload and lack of personnel, with some claiming that a single staff member was responsible for managing over 100 polling stations.

Reporter Park Jae-yeon has the story.

[Reporter]

These are posts uploaded by National Election Commission employees on their internal bulletin board.

Regarding the ballot paper shortage, one employee wrote on June 5, "While we acknowledge that the NEC is at fault, we must make the current situation, where the election system is overloaded, known," arguing that "the fundamental cause is the murderous workload and insufficient personnel."

On June 10, another employee asked rhetorically, "When one person is managing over 100 polling stations, could they possibly handle it alone if reports of ballot shortages come in simultaneously?"

According to the NEC, in the case of the Songpa-gu Election Commission in Seoul, where the ballot shortage occurred on election day, there were 13 staff members in total. However, only three or four of them were responsible for monitoring the voting situation at 146 polling stations under their jurisdiction while also preparing for the ballot counting, making it impossible to respond to emergency situations.

The staffing situation at local-level election commissions in other cities, counties, and districts was not much different.

This is why employees are flooding the internal bulletin board with arguments that a fundamental reorganization of the work system is urgent, stating, "The amount of work and logistics that local election commissions have to handle during simultaneous elections is enormous."

Experts point out that more authority should be delegated to local government officials who are actually mobilized for election duties, and that training should be strengthened.

[Lee Jae-mook / Professor of Political Science and Diplomacy, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies: We could simply prepare emergency personnel who can respond. We need to ensure they can acquire expertise in delegated election duties.]

While the ruling and opposition parties are reaching a consensus on forming a special parliamentary committee to investigate the ballot shortage, there is growing pressure to hasten legislative discussions for fundamental reforms of the NEC system, including the expansion of standing committee members.

(Reported by Lee Seung-hwan and Yang Hyun-chul | Video edited by Kim Yoon-sung | Graphics by Jang Chae-woo)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.