The Special Prosecutor's team, led by Lee Tae-han, has launched a forced investigation after uncovering evidence of real-time voter count manipulation during the 9th nationwide local elections at election offices across 30 cities and counties.
Starting at 9:10 a.m. on October 15, the team conducted raids on a total of seven offices, including the National Election Commission's Gwacheon headquarters and four local election offices in South Chungcheong, South Jeolla, Gwangju, and South Gyeongsang, as well as two city and county offices in Busan's Nam-gu and Jeju's Seogwipo.
A total of 31 personnel were involved in the raids, including three prosecutors, 20 investigators, and eight digital forensics experts. The Special Prosecutor's team plans to focus its investigation on determining the causes of the data manipulation and any directives from higher-ups.
The team has stationed forensic investigators at the National Election Commission to analyze the collected log data and has begun investigating over 70 officials responsible for real-time voter turnout reporting, confirming additional evidence of large-scale data manipulation.
Previously, a joint investigation by the police and prosecutors had identified false entries at election offices in five areas, including Seocho and Gangnam districts in Seoul, Gimpo and Uiwang cities in Gyeonggi Province, and Jincheon County in North Chungcheong.
The current investigation has revealed that a total of 30 election offices across 25 regions, including Guro, Mapo, and Seongbuk districts in Seoul, as well as cities in Gyeonggi Province such as Guri, Pyeongtaek, Suwon, Yongin, Seongnam, Namyangju, Yeoju, and Dongducheon, and various locations in North and South Chungcheong, Busan, and Gwangju, have been implicated in the manipulation.
These offices were found to have inflated or falsely reported hourly voter counts in the election management and vote counting systems. In some cases, the number of voters reported for specific time periods exceeded the actual final voter count, prompting officials to later falsify the overall figures to disguise the discrepancies.
In certain regions, officials did not correct the false entries and instead fixed the voter count at the same value or only increased it by a small amount, indicating a calculated effort to manipulate the statistics.
The manipulated hourly voter counts were publicly announced as real-time voter turnout information by local governments and the National Election Commission.
A spokesperson for the Special Prosecutor's team stated, "These acts of false reporting significantly undermine public trust in the fairness and transparency of elections, leading to distrust in the electoral system itself and posing a serious threat to the foundation of democracy."
The Special Prosecutor's team plans to clarify the responsibilities of those involved after analyzing the seized materials.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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