South Korea will strengthen vote-counting procedures for next year's general election, including manual confirmation of ballots and release of surveillance cameras

The 22nd National Assembly election (general election) will be held in South Korea on April 10 next year, and changes will be made to the vote counting procedure in order to increase the transparency and reliability of the election. examine the ballot paper
A clerk visually checks each sheet before counting them using a counting machine. In addition, images from surveillance cameras installed in advance and mail-in ballot boxes are monitored on large monitors installed at each city and road election management office building.
It will be open to the public 24 hours a day. The serial numbers printed on advance voting papers will also be changed from QR codes to barcodes. South Korea's Central Election Commission included this content on the 27th.
The government announced ``improvement plans to increase the transparency and credibility of general elections.'' The commission said, ``Although allegations of election fraud are largely unfounded, they are raised every election, leading to a sense of distrust in elections.''
``In order to prevent suspicions in advance, we have prepared this improvement plan after considering ways to improve transparency and credibility throughout the election process.''
The most notable feature is the introduction of manual counting of ballots. until now
After passing through an electronic vote counting machine, the ballots were placed into a ``screening and counting machine'' and checked visually by a vote counting clerk. Are the ballots that fall one by one at a constant speed from the screening counting machine classified correctly or are they normal?
This is a way to check if it is. However, suspicions of falsifying votes by ballot sorting machines have been constantly raised. Because the screening speed of the screening counting machine is fast, accurate confirmation with the naked eye is difficult.
There were also some points made. Therefore, in the improvement plan, a step was added in which a person would manually count the votes between the sorting work performed by the ballot sorting machine and the counting work performed by the review counting machine.
The commission will need to hire more election workers due to the additional manual vote counting work, and there is a possibility that the announcement of election results will be delayed.
It is said that there is. An official of the committee stated, ``We requested active cooperation in human resources and facilities at the national level, including the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, the Ministry of Education, and the Office of Personnel Innovation.''
"We plan to significantly increase the number of election supporters, including election workers and general election clerks." In addition, ``It is inevitable that the time required to count votes manually will be longer than before.''
He added, ``We have run internal simulations, but the final election results will not be available until the afternoon of the day after the election.''