All hands on deck at Korea's election watchdog as voting begins

General election 2024

Published: 10 Apr. 2024, 16:20 Updated: 10 Apr. 2024, 20:31

All hands on deck at Korea's election watchdog as voting begins

A National Election Commission official inspects a polling site at a middle school in Busan with a spy camera detector on Tuesday, a day ahead of the 2024 general election. [NEWS1]

Nearly 140,000 personnel were deployed to polling sites nationwide on Wednesday as voting for the 22nd National Assembly began in the morning.

All 3,000 employees of the National Election Commission (NEC), responsible for the general election's voting and tallying, have been on an emergency work shift since before 6 a.m. Wednesday, when voting began.

A total of 14,259 polling stations and 254 tallying sites were set up nationwide.

The NEC said it would continue inspecting the sites until the day ends, especially after discovering concealed spy cameras in early voting stations nationwide last month.

Around 139,000 personnel were deployed to polls nationwide for electoral management.

Some 76,000 personnel, including volunteers, will participate in tallying.

After the 12-hour voting window ends at 6 p.m., all ballot boxes will be transferred from polling stations to counting stations in each region. Likewise, early ballot boxes stored at provincial and municipal NEC offices will also be transported to the counting stations under police escort.

The counting stations' first task will be to open the sealed ballot boxes and sort the district seat and proportional representation ballots.

Tallying is expected to take one to two hours longer than in previous elections as the watchdog is counting all ballots by hand to preempt fears of election fraud.

Probable winners in the regional constituency races are expected to emerge around 2 a.m. Thursday, after approximately 70 to 80 percent of votes are tallied.

Vote tallying for directly elected regional constituencies will likely conclude around 4 a.m. Thursday, and for proportional representation seats around 6 a.m. on the same day.

BY CHO JUNG-WOO [cho.jungwoo1@joongang.co.kr]