SEOUL: South Korean police raided the National Election Commission’s headquarters and local election offices on Thursday (June 11) as a ballot shortage scandal expanded to allegations of missing evidence, vote-counting errors and the commission’s failure to follow operational standards.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said it mobilised about 100 personnel and launched search-and-seizure operations at 9am at seven locations, including the NEC headquarters in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, the Seoul Metropolitan Election Commission and district election offices in areas where ballot shortages occurred.
Police said the raids were aimed at determining the cause of the ballot shortage and the circumstances surrounding the NEC’s alleged poor management and response.
Ballot shortages were confirmed at 91 polling stations, while additional ballots were sent to 140 polling stations.
The controversy erupted during South Korea’s June 3 local elections, when ballot shortages were confirmed at 91 polling stations across the country. Additional ballots were sent to 140 polling stations, but some voters were unable to cast their ballots before the official closing of polls at 6pm.
The NEC extended voting hours at affected polling stations, but the incident sparked backlash over the commission’s management, preparation and crisis response.
The police investigation comes as scrutiny of the NEC has expanded beyond the ballot shortage itself, with additional allegations of election mismanagement emerging in the days since.
The allegations include the disposal of a ballot storage box sought as evidence and a data entry error that left more than 1,100 votes out of the computer tally.
Discarded ballot box
A storage box at the centre of the ballot shortage controversy in Songpa-gu, Seoul, was missing on June 10, a day after the Seoul Eastern District Court ordered its preservation as evidence.
The box’s absence was discovered when court officials visited the polling station to inspect the evidence. The Songpa-gu Election Commission, which had been expected to have the box, said it did not know its location.
“The election commission said they did not know where the evidence was,” said Reform Party Supreme Council member Kim Jeong-cheol, who attended the inspection on June 10 as the applicant for evidence preservation.
However, the Seoul Metropolitan Election Commission stated at around 8pm that day that the ballot storage box had already been discarded.
“The ballot storage box has already been discarded,” the commission said. “As an election-related item for which there is no legal obligation of preservation, it was disposed of in accordance with regular procedures.”
In a phone interview with Korean-language daily JoongAng Ilbo, a commission official said the box had been discarded before the court ordered its preservation.
The box is considered key evidence in allegations that the election commission prepared fewer ballots than required. Under NEC internal guidelines, each polling station must print ballots equivalent to at least 50 per cent of registered voters.
A label on the box lists 1,900 ballots, amounting to 49.3 per cent of the constituency’s registered voters.
Data entry error
The NEC also came under fire after local broadcaster KBS reported on June 10 that vote-counting results for the North Jeolla Province education superintendent election had been incorrectly entered into the commission’s computer system.
According to the report, officials at the Wansan-gu Election Commission in Jeonju mistakenly entered the vote-counting results from the third polling station in Hwasan 1-dong as results from the first polling station in the same neighbourhood.
The commission belatedly discovered the error on June 4, as vote counting was being finalised. But by then, the computer system had been locked after the completion of counting, making it impossible to correct the entry, according to the commission.
As a result, votes cast by 1,104 voters at the first polling station were omitted from the computer tally, while the results from the third polling station were reflected twice.
The commission did not notify the candidates of the vote-counting error.
The NEC said the error did not affect the outcome of the election.
Questions grow over ballot preparation standards
The controversy has also intensified after media outlet SBS reported on June 10 that most of the additional ballots sent to polling stations on Election Day did not have preprinted serial numbers.
According to the SBS report, a total of 24,577 additional ballots were supplied to 140 polling stations across the country on June 3. Of them, 17,247 ballots, or 70.2 per cent, were spare ballots without preprinted serial numbers, based on the broadcaster’s analysis of NEC data.
Election officials at polling stations reportedly had to write serial numbers manually, a process that may have further delayed the distribution of additional ballots.
Questions have also emerged as to how the NEC lowered its minimum prepared ballot standard from 60 per cent of registered voters to 50 per cent in December 2025.
According to reports by local daily Chosun Ilbo, the decision to lower the standard was made by the commission’s secretary-general and the head of its election policy bureau without a formal internal review process.
According to NEC data, 1,371 of 14,288 polling stations nationwide, or 9.6 per cent, had printed ballots equivalent to less than 50 per cent of registered voters. At 26 of these stations, voting had been suspended due to ballot shortages.
At the third polling station in Garak 2-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul – where a ballot shortage was first reported to the NEC – only 2,000 ballots were printed for 4,178 registered voters, or 47.8 per cent.
NEC blames ballot shortage on distribution failure
In a statement released on June 11, acting NEC chief Wi Cheol-hwan said the commission introduced the 50 per cent minimum threshold for ballot printing because of difficulties in inspecting and storing excess ballots, as well as past allegations of election fraud linked to the overprinting of ballots.
Wi said the 50 per cent figure was a minimum standard, but local election commissions were free to determine the ballot printing ratio for their constituencies.
He added that the ballot shortage in Songpa-gu, Seoul, was caused by a failure to properly distribute ballots among polling stations.
“Songpa-gu had 565,368 registered voters, and its overall turnout was 65.8 per cent. In Songpa-gu as a whole, more than 42,000 ballots remained unused. But we failed to properly distribute ballots among the 146 polling stations in the district, and that was a painful mistake,” he said.
Wi said an external fact-finding committee is conducting a rigorous investigation into the ballot shortage, and that the facts are expected to be clarified through investigations by law enforcement authorities and a possible parliamentary inquiry.
“However, as that process will take time and public questions are growing day by day, I decided to report what I know so far,” he said. - The Korea Herald/ANN
