KB News Desk
South Korea’s election watchdog on Wednesday rejected election petitions filed by the main opposition People Power Party seeking to invalidate the results of the Seoul and Busan mayoral elections and several other local races.
In its decisions, the National Election Commission acknowledged that ballot shortages and voting suspensions during the June 3 local elections had violated election rules but concluded that the irregularities did not affect the outcomes.
“Although violations of election regulations occurred in connection with ballot shortages and the suspension of voting in some polling districts, those violations cannot be considered to have affected the election result,” the commission said. “The petition is therefore rejected.”
The PPP has maintained that failures in election management prevented some voters from casting ballots and could have affected the outcomes.
The commission issued rulings on 261 petitions on Aug. 7 and Wednesday, rejecting 112 on their merits and dismissing the remaining 149 on legal or procedural grounds.
The petitions sought either to invalidate entire elections or overturn individual candidates’ victories in mayoral, gubernatorial and education superintendent races, as well as proportional-representation elections for metropolitan and provincial councils.
Among those rejected were PPP challenges to the mayoral elections in Busan, Incheon and Ulsan; the gubernatorial races in Gyeonggi and North Chungcheong provinces; the mayoral election in the Gwangju-South Jeolla Integrated Special City; and related proportional-representation council elections in those jurisdictions.
The PPP plans to file lawsuits in the party’s name seeking to invalidate the results of the June 3 local elections. A petitioner challenging the commission’s rejection or dismissal of an election petition has 10 days from receiving the written ruling to take the case to court.
The petitions followed an unprecedented ballot shortage during the June 3 local elections. Fifty polling stations nationwide ran out of ballots, with the combined shortfall estimated at 7,194, forcing some voters to wait and temporarily halting voting in several locations. The commission initially attributed the shortages to higher-than-expected turnout.
