Election officials classify mock ballots during a mock vote count for the 22nd National Assembly election. [Photo = Yonhap News]At the re-examination site for the April 15, 2020 general election in Yeongdeungpo-B, lawyers Park Ju-hyun and Do Tae-woo, who represented the plaintiff, testified as follows.

“On the day of the re-examination, none of the four boxes of absentee pre-voting ballots (mail-in ballots) contained an official count sheet. In the case of Yangsan, only one box was missing the official count sheet, but this was the first time all four boxes were missing them.”

An official count sheet is a formal document that records the number of votes received by each political party and candidate, the number of invalid votes, and the total number of votes, as determined by ballot sorters and manual counts. After initial sorting by ballot sorters, it is re-examined visually by the ballot counting and tabulation team before its accuracy is verified at the count sheet verification station.

As a document that guarantees the transparency of the vote counting process, it is indispensable and must always be included in its original form.

The plaintiff's lawyers had previously protested that copies, not originals, were included, but these four boxes did not even contain what was claimed to be a copy.

What does it mean for a ballot box not to contain a ballot list? First, it raises the possibility that the ballots were swapped. An allegation was raised that the list was omitted to avoid comparison during the process of filling the boxes with fake ballots instead of actual ones.

Another possibility is the "evidence destruction theory," where the list was intentionally removed because contradictions arose during the process of reconciling the election results and documents afterward.

However, the National Election Commission and the courts dismissed these as "simple administrative errors" and "confusion during the vote counting process."

The National Election Commission explained that errors in storage location could occur during the process where ballots go to the sorter and related documents are stored separately during vote counting.

Meanwhile, the court ruled that the mere fact that some documents were missing was insufficient to be considered evidence of "manipulation" that would overturn the election results themselves.

In this way, the National Election Commission and the courts view most evidence of electoral fraud as procedural deficiencies or misunderstandings, rather than acknowledging them as evidence of electoral fraud.

Lawyers Park Ju-hyun (left) and Do Tae-woo, who observed the re-examination site for Yeongdeungpo-B. [Photo = Hanmi Ilbo, Yonhap News]

At the re-examination site for Yeongdeungpo-B, in addition to the missing official count sheets, there were controversies surrounding △tampered seals (different seals were found than at the time of evidence preservation) and △abnormal ballots (bundles of new currency ballots, ballots with cut serial numbers, ballots with smudged ink, and ballots with staple marks).

Lawyer Park Ju-hyun stated, "At the Yeongdeungpo-B re-examination site, which lasted over 14 hours, 45 items suspected of electoral fraud were discovered. However, throughout the process, Supreme Court Justice Cho Jae-yeon consistently refused to recognize abnormal ballots as evidence and dismissed them."

Reporter Im Yo-hee