The National Election Commission (NEC) said Wednesday it will introduce a manual ballot counting system for general elections in April in an effort to ensure transparency and prevent potential election rigging.
Currently, machines are used to sort out and count votes.
Under the envisioned new system, however, ballots will first be sorted out by machines, and election staff will manually check all of them before putting them into the counting machines.
“It is meant to boost transparency and credibility over the course of the elections to prevent vote-rigging suspicions,” the commission said, adding that repeated suspicions over election fraud have “hampered national unity and fostered the boycott of election results.”
It is expected to take longer for the commission to confirm election results under the new system, and the commission will significantly beef up personnel for the process.
In this file photo, election officials count mock ballots for the 2024 general elections at a counting station in the southeastern city of Daegu on Sept. 20, 2023.
In a move to prevent any foul play, the NEC decided to stream live footage from surveillance cameras round-the-clock installed at places where boxes for mail-in and early-vote ballots are kept.
It also will apply a specialized control program to ballot sorting machines to make them only recognize authorized USB devices in a bid to block potential hacking attempts and strengthen security.
The state intelligence agency has raised concerns that the operating program currently installed on the machines can be hacked with the help of insiders.
Source: Yonhap News Agency