How to ensure a fair election

KANG TAE-HWA
The author is a Washington correspondent of the JoongAng Ilbo.

Late last month, ahead of Super Tuesday, when the U.S. presidential candidates will practically be decided, I found a strange device at a public library in Virginia where the primary election was scheduled. It was an electronic ballot box to be used a week later.

The ballot box in a separate room was clearly visible from outside. What caught my eye were the words “voting” in both English and Korean, due to the large population of Korean Americans in the area. It led me to wonder whether the ballot box was safe.

I asked a related official, who looked puzzled and said, “It’s always been like this.” When I brought up the refusal to accept election results that led to violence, he said, “It’s actually safe to leave it where people can see it. [...] No one but you cares about it.”

In the New Hampshire primary in January, I had permission to enter the polling station, but I was not allowed to approach the ballot box. The counting of votes was not allowed to be filmed until the election observers announced the result because of the possibility of election fraud.

Voters had to enter information proving citizenship to find out the location of the polling station. The locations are not to be exposed out of concern for an unexpected emergency, even though only the ballot boxes are left inside the polling station.

According to a poll conducted by Suffolk University, 52 percent of Trump supporters suspect possible election fraud in this year’s presidential election, while only seven percent said it would be fair. On the contrary, 81 percent of Biden supporters said they believed in fairness, while only 3 percent said they didn’t trust the fairness of the election.

Regardless of party affiliation, 83 percent said they were worried about democracy. In addition, Trump also continued to fuel distrust over the election itself — the essence of democracy — by claiming that he needed to secure a turnout too large to be rigged.

The situation in Korea is quite serious ahead of the April 10 parliamentary elections. The National Election Commission, guilty of the so-called basket-voting farce, added the process of hand counting.

With so many political parties, the proportional representation ballot is expected to be even longer than 48 centimeters (19 inches) in the last parliamentary election, raising the possibility of hand-counting in the upcoming election. But on the stamping of early voting ballots, no decision has been made yet due to a lack of manpower.

President Abraham Lincoln, one of the most respected by Americans, said, “The ballot is stronger than the bullet.” But casting votes through an untrustworthy system results in compromised strength.

Especially in Korea — where a mere 0.73 percent determined the outcome of the last presidential election in 2022 — a more meticulous and fair “rule of the game” is needed.