[Column] The National Election Commission Must Answer: A New Election Is the Only Way!

When an institution charged with safeguarding the people’s sacred right to vote rejects an audit from the Board of Audit and Inspection, what message does that send? That they are above scrutiny? Immune from accountability? This isn’t just a bureaucratic stumble-this is the collapse of trust, a direct assault on democracy itself.

 

Look at what happened in this early presidential election. We’re not talking about isolated errors; we’re staring down a system-wide pattern of irregularities that scream of negligence or worse.

 

A voter in Yongin opens their ballot envelope only to find a pre-marked vote for Lee Jae-myung. In Daechi 2-dong, an election worker brazenly casts a vote for her own husband. Across 3,568 polling stations, can we really believe these are the only two incidents? What iceberg lurks beneath these visible cracks?

 

Then there’s the Seodaemun-case a ballot literally walked out of a polling station, the voter goes out for lunch, returns, and votes like nothing happened. No checks. No verification. Imagine if someone had color-copied those ballots and stuffed them into the box by the hundreds. The implications are staggering.

 

And let’s not forget the infamous “basket voting” fiasco from three years ago. What exactly has the NEC been doing since then? They didn’t learn. They didn’t fix it. They didn’t care. When public outrage erupted, the NEC’s Secretary-General Kim Yong-bin issued a half-hearted apology. But an apology won’t cut it. Not this time.

 

Now, let’s zoom out. Why are we even having this early presidential election? It traces back to former President Yoon Suk-yeol’s attempt to declare martial law-an act that, at the time, was met with fierce public resistance. But in light of the NEC’s persistent failures, one has to ask: was that justification for martial law really so baseless?

 

Right now, as we speak, citizens are staging all-night protests outside the NEC’s headquarters in Gwacheon. They’re shouting “Stop the election!” and “Nullify the presidential vote!” These aren’t fringe radicals-they’re everyday people driven to desperation by an institution that has failed them time and again.

 

So what do we do? The answer is simple, if bold:

1. Invalidate the advance votes.

2. Bring the parties to the table, forge a national consensus, and set a new date for the main election with a 30-day preparation period.

3. Hold the election over three days to ensure every voter has the opportunity to participate without chaos or confusion.

This isn’t unprecedented. In 2016, Austria held a re-vote after ballot issues derailed their state assembly election. In 2021, Berlin, Germany, called a re-election because of a few defective ballot seals. That’s how mature democracies respond-by acknowledging the problem and fixing it.

 

We have our own painful history: the March 15th fraudulent election of 1960, a wound that still aches in the nation’s soul. Have we learned nothing? The people’s sovereignty is not a political plaything. It’s not negotiable.

 

It’s time for courage. It’s time for accountability. It’s time for the NEC to answer for its failures-and for the nation to demand a new election that restores faith in our democratic system.

 

The future of our democracy hangs in the balance. The time for action is now.