National Election Commission. Yonhap News

 Across the country, the National Election Commission (NEC) is filing complaints, and the police are launching investigations, claiming that "marking seals" (ganin) were placed on ballot boxes. 

Despite poll watchers exercising their legally guaranteed rights under Article 161 of the Public Official Election Act, the NEC has drawn its sword, vowing to pursue criminal punishment for this act under the guise of "tampering with ballot boxes." This body, which claims to be a constitutional institution, is infringing upon the right to monitor elections guaranteed by the Constitution.

Ganin is a type of safety measure where poll watchers verify that the ballot box seals are properly affixed and leave a "trace of surveillance" in case someone tampers with the seals later. A stamp or signature placed across the seal and the ballot box itself can immediately confirm unauthorized opening. This is a simpler and more powerful deterrent against election fraud than any other means, and it has been a long-standing, tolerated or even encouraged practice in elections nationwide for years. 

However, the NEC is now aggressively demanding investigations, labeling ganin as "tampering."

By this logic, simply standing next to a ballot box and "looking at it intently" would be considered election obstruction, and touching it to check if it's properly sealed would also be deemed tampering. Even a stamp that can be wiped off with an alcohol swab is being called "vandalism." The NEC's intentions are suspicious, seemingly aimed at completely blocking election monitoring. 

On the surface, they claim it's for "preventing damage," but in reality, it's closer to "neutralizing" public scrutiny and suspicion. 

Ballot boxes are not "sacred." Elections are a process of receiving delegation from the people, and their procedures must be subject to public oversight. The rights of poll watchers are not a matter of permission from the NEC; they are rights guaranteed by law for the people. For the NEC to file complaints against such poll watchers and for the state to launch investigations is a self-contradiction of constitutional power and a destruction of the election system.

Even more serious is that these measures are spreading nationwide on an unprecedented scale. This strongly suggests that it's not an isolated incident of individual NEC branches acting spontaneously, but rather that internal directives or common response strategies from the central NEC are in play. If this is the case, it's not merely a matter of "misunderstanding" or "overreaction," but a clear abuse of power and infringement of constitutional rights.

Article 4 of the Administrative Procedure Act stipulates that "the trust of the people shall be protected." For the NEC, which has effectively allowed ganin in numerous elections, to suddenly make it a punishable offense is a clear breach of trust. The consistency and fairness of elections stem from the stability of their procedures, and democracy loses its footing when citizens who attempt to monitor the system are treated as criminals.

Today, public distrust arises not from "failure to prove" but from "exclusion from monitoring." What the NEC should be doing now is not filing complaints against citizens who made seals, but reflecting on why citizens felt compelled to perform ganin in the first place. Citizens have stepped in because the NEC itself has forfeited trust in the transparency of its seals, and the current actions to portray those citizens as criminals are merely a cowardly political tactic to cover up incompetence.

Whose are the ballot boxes? They belong to the people. The NEC, which fears public oversight, is the entity that truly deserves investigation.

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