Special investigation of the National Election Commission, “Neon Commission, concealment and forgery of the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education’s vote counting status table” (comprehensive)

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Hwang Jae-ha and Choi Yun-seon = The National Election Commission's special prosecutor team, Lee Tae-han, who is investigating the shortage of ballot papers for the June 3 local elections, began a search and seizure after finding that an employee of the National Election Commission concealed and falsified the ballot counting status table for the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education Superintendent election so that the ballot counting results were different from the actual ones.

On the 10th, the National Election Commission's special prosecution team announced that it had received a search and seizure warrant from the court on charges of violating the Public Official Election Act and was conducting a search and seizure against the Gyeonggi Provincial Election Commission and the Gwangju City Election Commission in Gyeonggi Province.

The special prosecution team believes that in relation to the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education Superintendent election during the last local election, Gwangju City Election Commission employees concealed and falsified the vote counting situation table, causing the vote counting results to be different from the actual vote, and are confirming the circumstances in which the Gwangju City Election Commission intervened to hide such concealment and forgery.

Previously, on June 11, the Gyeonggi Provincial Election Commission announced in its 'Public Apology for Incorrect Entry of Ballot Count Results' that the voting results were entered incorrectly due to an error in entering the number of votes at the second polling station in Chowol-eup, Gwangju, Gyeonggi-do.

According to this, the vote counting clerk initially incorrectly entered the 9th polling station in Chowol-eup as the 2nd polling station, so the counting results from the 9th polling station were entered twice in the 2nd polling station.

Due to this input error, the number of votes at this polling station was initially announced as 582 votes for Candidate Ahn Min-seok and 668 votes for Candidate Lim Tae-hee, but was later revised to 798 votes for Candidate Ahn and 869 votes for Candidate Lim.

At the time, there was an error in entering the vote count results of the two candidates interchangeably not only in Chowol-eup, Gwangju but also at the 3rd polling station in Geumgwang 2-dong, Jungwon-gu. As a result of correcting the two errors, the number of votes between the two candidates decreased by 47 votes from the originally announced difference of 379,039 votes to 378,992 votes.

The Gyeonggi Provincial Election Commission announced that it identified this error during a thorough investigation of the vote counting results in accordance with the Public Official Election Act, which states that if there is a clear error, the decision must be corrected within 10 days of the election.

While looking into the process of such ballot counting errors, the special prosecutor's team discovered circumstances of concealment and falsification of the ballot counting situation table by Gwangju City Election Commission employees, and is investigating whether the Gwangju City Election Commission systematically hid this.

The special prosecutor's team explained, "This search and seizure is aimed at clearly confirming the related charges and whether there was systematic involvement in concealment and forgery."

In addition, he emphasized, "Crimes such as concealing and falsifying the vote count status table are serious crimes that can shake the foundation of democracy and fundamentally damage the fairness of the election system," and added, "We plan to clearly identify the true cause and prevent recurrence."