Public verification of Olympic Park ballot papers continues for 7 hours... About half completed

Protests by observers from the National Power Party continue... There are no major conflicts yet, but variables still remain.

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Choi Won-jeong = The National Election Commission's special prosecutor team, Lee Tae-han, has been conducting large-scale verification of approximately 2.47 million ballots for the June 3 local elections at the handball stadium at Olympic Park in Songpa-gu, Seoul for seven hours.

Starting around 11:50 a.m. on the 28th, the National Election Commission's special investigation team is inspecting the quantity and printing status of ballots stored at Olympic Park in the presence of observers and checking for hacking of equipment such as sorters.

The special investigation team has so far checked the quantity and marking/printing status of ballots for the elections of the Seoul mayor, Songpa-gu mayor, and constituency Seoul city/Songpa-gu council members one by one, and separately classified ballots suspected of having abnormalities.

After counting the remaining proportional representation ballots for the election of Seoul Metropolitan City and Songpa-gu council members and the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, we plan to further verify the classified ballots using on-site optical equipment.

Looking at the current trend, it appears that the special prosecution team's public verification is about half completed.

Initially, the special prosecutor's team planned to start the verification around 9 a.m. on this day, but it was delayed for about three hours as observers from the People's Power Party strongly opposed the policy of not allowing filming.

People Power Party Supreme Council member Kim Min-soo and others protested for about 30 minutes, saying that verification involving the National Election Commission was not being carried out properly.

Some observers attempted to film with their cell phones or use equipment they had arbitrarily brought, but were stopped and a commotion broke out, but no major clashes have occurred yet.

As long as detailed analysis is required, the ballots will be used in the special investigation team's investigation. Papers with no abnormalities found are moved to a secure warehouse separately designated by the National Election Commission.

Regarding this, some observers are maintaining the position that they cannot trust the National Election Commission's management, so it is expected to act as a variable until the public verification is completed safely.