South Korean President Lee Jae Myung criticized the shortage of ballot papers in last week's local elections as damaging to the country's democratic reputation, while protesters demand a rerun. The electoral commission printed ballots for only 73% of eligible voters, causing delays.
South Korea n President Lee Jae Myung described the shortage of ballot papers in last week's election as"ridiculous" and"shocking". South Korea n protesters demanding a rerun of the local elections due to a shortage of ballot papers stage a sit-in protest outside a ballot counting station in Seoul on Jun 7, 2026.
Add CNA as a trusted source to help Google better understand and surface our content in search results. SEOUL: South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said on Monday that ballot paper shortages in last week's local elections dealt a serious blow to the country's reputation as a model democracy, and he welcomed the protests questioning the fairness of the process.
"It was just ridiculous," Lee said at a news conference when asked about the Jun 3 incident that kept some voters waiting for hours at polling stations for ballot papers to be delivered. "It was probably something that's hard for even people in a lesser developed democracy to imagine that people couldn't vote because they didn't have ballot papers," Lee said. "Shocking.
" Thousands of people, many of them in their 20s and 30s, have protested outside a ballot counting station in Seoul,The commission has said it printed ballot papers for 73 per cent of the total eligible voters - calculated based on previous turnout rates - and polling stations in some districts were slow to receive additional ballot papers after they started to run out. The constitutional guarantee of independence given to the NEC has led to a complacency that exposed a fundamental problem in how the election process is managed, Lee said.
The incident did not point to the possibility of election fraud as some critics have claimed, Lee said, but there may be some people who are criminally responsible. Lee's liberal Democratic Party posted a strong showing in the elections to pick provincial governors, mayors and local assembly members, while the opposition conservatives retained Seoul's mayoralty.
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