Officials from the Joint Investigation Headquarters are seen leaving the National Election Commission (NEC) headquarters in Gwacheon on the 23rd after completing a search and seizure operation. The joint prosecutorial and police investigation team, formed to uncover the truth behind the ballot paper shortage, conducted raids starting this morning at the central NEC in Gwacheon, as well as the NEC offices in Songpa-gu, Gangnam-gu, and Seocho-gu. [Yonhap News]

On the day of the June 3rd local elections, the National Election Commission (NEC) received a total of 72 requests to revise voter turnout reports, with some instances showing voter numbers increasing by over 6,000 or revisions being made as late as 12 hours after the fact.

Furthermore, the reasons for these revisions were not clearly documented, indicating a "haphazard" approach to the management of election data.

The joint investigation headquarters, which is looking into allegations of "voter turnout manipulation" by the NEC, has secured these records and is now verifying whether there are additional instances where staff may have manipulated statistics without leaving an audit trail.

According to the "Time-series Voter Turnout Revision History" submitted to the office of Representative Kim Eun-hye of the People Power Party by the NEC on the 27th, the NEC received a total of 72 revision reports from 56 district, city, and county election commissions across the country on the day of the local elections.

Given that there are 255 district, city, and county election commissions nationwide, it is possible that further undisclosed revisions exist.

Under the Comprehensive Local Election Management Guidelines, any revisions to data entered into the election management system must be accompanied by a detailed justification, and the provincial election commission must verify these reasons before authorizing any changes.

However, the records show that the reasons provided by each local election commission were inconsistent, ranging from "correction due to omission" to simply "change in voter count."

As the June 3rd local elections approach in two days, NEC officials are conducting final inspections at the counting station set up at the Daegu Gymnasium in Buk-gu, Daegu, on the 1st. [Yonhap News]

According to the revision history, the election commission in Geomdan-gu, Incheon, initially reported 54,665 voters as of 4:00 PM, but later revised this figure to 61,276—an increase of more than 6,000 voters.

The NEC cited the reason for this request as "total turnout discrepancies despite collection and storage after final reports from individual polling stations."

In Sacheon, South Gyeongsang Province, the voter count was revised from 15,634 at noon to 19,631, while in Goseong County, Gangwon Province, the count increased from 4,392 at 11:00 AM to 5,639.

In Baegun-dong No. 1 Polling Station in Danwon-gu, Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, 41 voters were erroneously recorded as 410, and in Gyegok-myeon, Haenam County, South Jeolla Province, 84 voters were incorrectly entered as 284 before being corrected.

In some cases, corrections were not made immediately.

In Gunpo, Gyeonggi Province, an error in the 7:00 AM voter count was not corrected until 7:00 PM, and in Jincheon County, North Chungcheong Province, a voter count from 6:00 PM was changed at 9:00 PM—well after voting had closed.

Some figures were revised multiple times. At the No. 1 Polling Station in Yonggang-dong, Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, the voter count was reduced from 2,162 to 2,161, only to be reverted back to 2,162 shortly after.

In Sangdang-gu, Cheongju, and Hongseong County, South Chungcheong Province, revisions were made after the 4:00 PM and 5:00 PM voter counts were entered as identical figures.

The time-series voter turnout provided by the central NEC follows a structure where polling station managers report figures by phone to the local (eup, myeon, dong) election commissions, which then report them to the district, city, or county commissions via the election management system.

Subsequently, the district, city, and county commissions transmit the voter counts to the provincial and central NEC via a dedicated reporting system.

The investigation team suspects that when errors occurred in the reported voter counts, NEC staff may have manipulated turnout figures by distributing numbers across inputs instead of following standard, transparent correction procedures.

Currently, signs of voter manipulation have emerged in two locations in the Gyeonggi region, including Gimpo, as well as in the Chungcheong region, and officials are investigating whether similar suspicious cases exist in other areas.

Representative Kim Eun-hye emphasized, "The voter turnout, which should be the most fundamental and accurate data, was tracked and revised in a haphazard manner," adding, "It is difficult to gauge how far this lax election management may have spread. This is exactly why a special investigation must be conducted thoroughly and without sanctuary."