Exclusive: Voters Turn Away After Seeing Long Lines at Polling Station Due to Ballot Shortage

[Anchor]

We have obtained CCTV footage from the 7th Polling Station in Jamsil 4-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul, where voting was first suspended on local election day due to a shortage of ballots. The footage captures scenes of voters arriving at the polling station, only to turn back after seeing the long waiting lines.

Reporter Kim Kwan-jin has the story.

[Reporter]

This is the internal CCTV footage from the 7th Polling Station in Jamsil 4-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul.

It is 5:52 PM, eight minutes before the polls were set to close.

A woman enters the polling station pushing a stroller.

However, she hesitates, seemingly taken aback by the long, stagnant line stretching to the entrance caused by the ballot shortage.

She glances toward the inside of the polling station, as if trying to gauge how many voters are waiting.

After listening to an explanation from a poll worker, she initially joins the line. But six minutes later, faced with the need to register her personal information and receive a waiting ticket, she decides she can wait no longer and leaves the polling station.

We reviewed the CCTV footage until the moment the polling station officially closed, but the woman did not return to cast her vote.

This scene illustrates how the voters' right to participate in the election was infringed upon due to the National Election Commission's (NEC) complacent demand forecasting and failure in ballot distribution.

Other voters were also captured turning away after being informed of the voting delays. The NEC did not even keep a record of exactly how many people were unable to vote.

One man who arrived at the polling station with a child during the suspension period left after a long conversation with a poll worker, though he managed to return just before the deadline to barely exercise his right to vote.

[Kim Jung-chul / Supreme Council Member of the Reform Party: The right to vote is what secures the legitimacy of the Republic of Korea's governance structure. If the NEC does not undergo reform at a level equivalent to dissolution, there is a concern that distrust in the election system will only continue to grow.]

The confirmed number of eligible voters for the 7th Polling Station in Jamsil 4-dong was 3,204.

While 1,836 people actually voted on the day of the main election, only 1,400 ballots were initially provided.

The election log records that 500 additional ballots were supplied in five batches of 100 each.

Only 64 ballots remained in the end.

(Video Editing: Park Ji-in, Design: Jegal Chan, Park Cheon-woong)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.