Editor's Pick: "Managing This Alone?" Staff Outrage Over Election Ballot Shortages Highlights Systemic Overload

These are posts uploaded by National Election Commission (NEC) employees to their internal bulletin board.

Regarding the ballot paper shortage, one employee wrote on June 5, "While we admit the NEC made mistakes, we must make the current situation of an overloaded election system known," arguing that "the root cause is a murderous workload and a lack of personnel."

On June 10, another employee asked, "One person is responsible for managing over 100 polling stations. When reports of ballot shortages come in simultaneously, how could one person possibly handle it?"

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 tasked with managing the voting situation at 146 polling stations under their jurisdiction while also preparing for the ballot count, 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 claims that a fundamental reorganization of the work system is urgent, stating, "The volume of work and logistics handled by local election commissions 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.

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

The ruling and opposition parties have reached a preliminary consensus on forming a special parliamentary committee to investigate the ballot shortage. Meanwhile, calls are growing for urgent legislative discussions on fundamental reforms to the NEC system, including expanding the number of standing committee members.

Internal Board Reveals: "One Person Managing Over 100 Locations, Insufficient" (June 15, 2026, Morning Wide)

Reported by Park Jae-yeon | Written by Lee Se-young | Video by Lee Seung-hwan and Yang Hyun-chul | Video Editing by Kim Yoon-sung | Graphics by Jang Chae-woo | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.