Following an error in vote count input that led to incorrect vote tabulation in the Jeonbuk Provincial Superintendent of Education election during the 9th National Simultaneous Local Elections, a similar incident has been identified in the Gyeonggi Provincial Superintendent of Education election.

Gyeonggi Provincial Election Commission [Provided by the Gyeonggi Provincial Election Commission]

The Gyeonggi Provincial Election Commission revealed this fact on the 11th through a 'Public Apology Regarding Election Results Input Error' posted on its website.

According to the apology, the vote count input errors occurred at two polling stations: Polling Station No. 3 in Geumgwang 2-dong, Jungwon-gu, Seongnam-si, and Polling Station No. 2 in Chowol-eup, Gwangju-si.

At Polling Station No. 3 in Geumgwang 2-dong, the vote counts for candidates Ahn Min-seok and Im Tae-hee, who were in a two-way race, were swapped during input.

After the election, it was announced that candidate Ahn received 368 votes and candidate Im received 337 votes. However, the accurate vote count was 337 votes for candidate Ahn and 368 votes for candidate Im.

The Gyeonggi Provincial Election Commission explained, "Unlike other public official elections, the Superintendent of Education election does not have candidate numbers. The order on the ballot is determined by lottery, and ballots are distinguished as Type A (Im Tae-hee - Ahn Min-seok) and Type B (Ahn Min-seok - Im Tae-hee). At this polling station, which used Type B ballots, the input was mistakenly made in the default order of the vote counting system: Im Tae-hee - Ahn Min-seok."

In the case of Polling Station No. 2 in Chowol-eup, the election results from a different polling station were entered.

The Gyeonggi Provincial Election Commission stated that a vote counting official mistakenly entered Polling Station No. 9 in Chowol-eup as Polling Station No. 2, resulting in the election results from Polling Station No. 9 being duplicated for both Polling Station No. 9 and Polling Station No. 2.

Consequently, the vote counts that were incorrectly entered as 582 votes for candidate Ahn and 668 votes for candidate Im were corrected to 798 votes for candidate Ahn and 869 votes for candidate Im.

As a result of correcting the incorrectly entered vote counts from the two polling stations, the candidates' vote totals changed from the initial 3,557,171 votes for candidate Ahn and 3,178,132 votes for candidate Im to 3,557,356 votes for candidate Ahn and 3,178,364 votes for candidate Im. The difference in votes between the two candidates narrowed to 47 votes.

Although the incorrect vote tabulation due to input errors was belatedly discovered, it was confirmed that it did not significantly impact the election outcome, such as reversing the winner.

Regarding the circumstances and timing of the error detection, the Gyeonggi Provincial Election Commission stated, "According to the Public Official Election Act, when a clear error is found in the determination of the winner, the decision of the winner must be rectified within 10 days after the election day. Based on this provision, during the process of a full investigation of election results, the Seongnam case was confirmed on June 10th, and the Gwangju case on June 9th."

Previously, the Jeonbuk Provincial Election Commission had announced the occurrence of a vote count input error in the Jeonbuk Provincial Superintendent of Education election the previous day.