Jang Dong-hyeok Alleges Fraud in June 3 Local Elections, Demands Rerun

Jang Dong-hyeok, leader of the People Power Party, claimed on the 27th, in connection with the National Election Commission's mishandling of voting management, that "if the election commission, which holds all the data, cannot clearly explain this, these local elections were comprehensively fraudulent." Jang urged that a rerun election be held immediately, saying the fairness of the June 3 local elections had been compromised.

Jang made the remarks at a press conference at the National Assembly on the same day, before attending oral arguments in an election appeal at the National Election Commission, stating that "all the burden of proof now falls on the election commission."

Explaining why he filed the election appeal, Jang said, "An election nullification lawsuit must go through an election appeal first." He said, "When a mistake is made, the ones who best know what went wrong are the administrative agency that made the mistake, and all the evidence is held by that agency." He added, "So we have given the election commission a final chance to look back at what went wrong, admit its own mistakes, and hold a rerun election."

Referring to media reports that the election commission's revised reports of voter numbers on the day of the local elections reached 72 cases, Jang claimed, "Arbitrary revisions would be manipulation." He said, "Arbitrarily manipulating voter numbers necessarily means the vote counts were also manipulated," and "manipulation of turnout inevitably leads to manipulation of vote shares."

He also claimed that the fairness of the election had been greatly undermined by several procedural flaws already revealed in the local elections. He pointed out that the Public Official Election Act was not properly observed in the process of sending and storing ballots, and that some ballots had no serial numbers or had them written by hand. He also claimed that as voting was delayed, some voters cast their ballots after encountering exit poll and vote-counting results, undermining the fairness of the election.

Regarding "twin vote counts," Jang said, "Rather than the election commission insisting and browbeating people to believe in an impossible probability, if the election commission itself cannot now prove that there was no doubt about these vote shares and no computer manipulation whatsoever, the public will inevitably be suspicious not only of these local elections but of all elections conducted so far."

He went on, "The argument that to commit election fraud you would have to bribe election commission staff, police, postal sorting office workers, and observers now has no ground to stand on." He pointed out, "If, no matter how thoroughly you supervise up to the vote count, the election commission can fiddle with all the numbers at the final stage without any oversight, that is a serious problem."

He also raised doubts about the fairness of previous elections. He emphasized, "Can an investigation reveal all of how much was manipulated? And even if it does, will the public believe it?" He added, "It will be the same for these local elections and for the elections before them."

Jang argued that a rerun election should be held immediately. He said, "Even if the election commission gets down on its knees and apologizes to the public now, I do not think that makes dismantling the commission unnecessary. Reform at the level of dismantling the commission is absolutely necessary." But he added, "However, before committing an unforgivable sin against the people in the end, admitting all its faults even now and holding a rerun election is the only last responsible act the election commission—which has so damaged the Republic of Korea's election system—can perform for the public."