Seoul: The National Election Commission is facing intense backlash over the ballot shortage that occurred during the June 3 local elections. Protest rallies condemning the incident that disrupted voting continued across the country on Sunday, including outside the Jamsil vote-counting center at Olympic Park in Seoul's Songpa-gu. The repercussions of this incident are far-reaching, as it has fueled the spread of election fraud conspiracy theories.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the commission urgently supplied additional ballot papers to 67 of the 14,288 polling stations nationwide during the election. Ballot paper shortages in areas expected to favor opposition candidates have fueled public suspicion that the election commission may not have acted impartially. Despite controversy surrounding the commission's explanation that the incident was merely an administrative error, it deserves condemnation for the fact that voters were turned away from polling stations due to a shortage of ballot papers.

At a polling station in Jamsil, voting hours were extended beyond the scheduled closing time as officials belatedly replenished a shortage of ballot papers. Voting continued while ballots from other regions were already being counted. Protesters prevented two ballot boxes from being taken to a counting center, but police forcibly dispersed them 35 hours later and transferred the boxes to the counting center at Olympic Park. The local elections concluded after the ballots in those boxes were counted.

The election commission has repeatedly come under fire over poor ballot-paper management and nepotistic hiring practices. It collected some completed ballots in baskets, and some voters took their ballot papers outside polling stations, ate at nearby restaurants, and then returned to vote. It is illegal to take out ballot papers. It also emerged that preferential hiring of relatives of commission employees was widespread.

Jang Dong-hyeok, chief of the People Power Party, has called for a new election. However, there is considerable opinion that it would be premature to immediately use this incident as grounds for invalidating the election and revoting. A thorough investigation must come first. The appropriate course of action should be determined based on the findings of that investigation. If the findings are to command public trust, an independent investigation by an outside body is essential, rather than an internal investigation by the commission itself.

The election commission has consistently refused state audits on its duties, citing its status as an independent constitutional body. Whenever problems arose, it weathered the controversy by apologizing, accepting resignations, conducting internal investigations, and announcing corrective measures. The Board of Audit and Inspection launched an inspection of the NEC in response to a hiring-nepotism scandal involving relatives of its officials. The commission filed a constitutional jurisdiction dispute with the Constitutional Court, which ruled in the commission's favor.

The dangers of unchecked power have once again been exposed by this ballot paper shortage incident. To ensure the integrity of election results, either a robust system of external oversight must be established, or fundamental reforms on the scale of dismantling and restructuring the organization are needed.