"We Admit Our Fault, But..." Voices of Frustration Emerge on NEC Internal Bulletin Board

[Anchor]

Voices of self-reproach and condemnation are emerging from within the National Election Commission (NEC). Among the staff, there are claims that the recent incident was caused by "a small workforce and a murderous workload," with some asserting that "a single employee 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 to their internal bulletin board.

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

On June 10, another employee asked, "One person is managing over 100 polling stations; if reports of paper shortages come in simultaneously, 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 responsible for 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 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 volume of work and logistics handled by city and district 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.

[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 have the expertise regarding delegated election duties.]

While rival parties are reaching a consensus on forming a special parliamentary investigation committee regarding the ballot shortage, there is growing pressure to also expedite legislative discussions for fundamental reforms of the NEC system, including the expansion of standing committee members.

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