Campaign Monitoring Workers Often Violate Election Regulations

Members of monitoring teams endorsed by political parties should prove their non-member status to the National Election Commission (NEC) to better inspect irregularities and forestall government intervention in the elections.

However, they often commit their own irregularities by passing the NEC’s confidential directives on to political parties or overstating small mistakes on the part of rival parties.

During the NEC’s inspection period, they pass information over to the parties by phone or by visiting the party offices, said an NEC official.

There are monitoring workers who never report to work.

A 40-year-old monitoring worker, known by his last name Kim, violently protested on April 6 when NEC officials attempted to take action against campaign workers of the party which endorsed him for their irregularities. The campaign workers wore sashes bearing a political slogan: a clear violation of election law.

“We often told monitoring workers that we would hit the east of the district when we actually planned to inspect the west to divert their attention,” an NEC worker in Seoul said. “Information drain is very serious. However, we have difficulty finding perpetuators for the lack of physical evidence.”

The situation is so dire that NEC districts are mulling new security measures. In most districts, meetings on detail schedules are confidential. Monitoring workers’ access to such meetings is denied.

An NEC district in Seoul resorted to a drastic measure to detect the monitoring workers’ wrongdoings: it ordered employees to tape monitoring workers’ wrongdoings.

The government said a total of 12,000 monitoring workers are working in a total of 243 electoral districts. Among them, about 5,000, or close to 50 percent, are endorsed by political parties.

The problem is that they were appointed as monitoring workers only with a recommendation by a political party and a letter proving their non-affiliate status. Most of them are unemployed senior citizens who have little knowledge of electoral regulations. The NEC has spent lots of resources and time educating them.

There are no detail regulations on the management of the monitoring teams. However, the election law stipulates that the monitoring workers should be dismissed for violation of political neutrality or noncompliance with NEC directives.

“We will review regulations on monitoring teams endorsed by political parties,” an NEC official said. “If there are serious loopholes, we will submit an amendment to the National Assembly.”