Recounting Has No Impact On Presidential Election Result

Grand National Party has filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court, alleging the 16th presidential election was invalid due to the errors in counting the ballots. The court accepted the claim, and, upon its order, local district courts across the nation conducted recounting the ballots, which were collected from 80 ballot polls.

The recounting has found out some errors, but the number of erroneous ballots is so small that it would not have any practical impact on the result. For example, a bundle of 100 ballots bound for a particular candidate contained some ballots belonging to the other candidates, and invalid votes were found to have been counted valid.

Consequently, the Supreme Court is like to dismiss the lawsuit, and Grand National Party itself is expected to withdraw its request for more recounting and to voluntarily dismiss its case.

According to the National Election Commission, as of 3 p.m. yesterday, 29% of the total of 11,049,000 ballots have been recounted. The recounting result takes out 177 votes for Millennium Democratic candidate Roh Moo-hyun, and 48 for Grand National candidate Lee Hui-chang.

Several factors contributed to reduction of the number of votes. 194 votes that had been considered valid were decided "undeterminable" and another 46 were found invalid. In addition, some errors were discovered, which had occurred during ballot-counting on Election Day night. Contrary to Grand National Party`s allegation, no error occurred during the electronic counting.

The Supreme Court will officially receive the recounting result, and inform the complainant and the defendant of it sometime today, or Grand National Party and the election commission, respectively.

For the first time in history, recounting was conducted with regard to a presidential election. The recounting got started, upon order of the Supreme Court, at 10 am yesterday at 35 courts across the nation. The recounting was monitored by judges and representatives of the party and the commission.

Wi-Yong Jung viyonz@donga.com