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The Election Commission is a constitutionally independent body, so no one, including the President, the National Assembly, and the Supreme Court, can interfere with it. This is a product of Korea’s history riddled with rigged elections during the dictatorial regimes.
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Recently in Korea, groundless conspiracy theories about rigged elections have become popular among far-right groups. As the National Election Commission became a target of these conspiracy theories because of the large number of leftover ballots, it commissioned a research study and introduced a regulation allowing each local election commission, at its discretion, to print ballots for as little as 50 percent of the population in its region.
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However, the voter turnout for this year’s local election soared. A shortage of ballots occurred at some polling stations in Songpa District, but looking at Songpa District as a whole, ballots remained. Regions that flexibly handled the remaining ballots did not experience this issue. The printing of too few ballots and the failure of distribution overlapped.
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Progressive voters tend to vote early, while conservative voters tend to vote on Election Day. As a result, ballot shortages occurred mainly in conservative areas where Election Day turnout was particularly high.
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The National Election Commission has effectively fueled election-rigging conspiracy theories through its incompetence. Demonstrators surrounded a ballot-counting center, causing the counting to be delayed for a while, and even now that the counting is over, this crowd of demonstrators continues to grow.
submitted by /u/Agile-Shallot3546
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