Park Joo-min, a preliminary candidate for Seoul mayor from the Democratic Party of Korea, on the 6th pointed to promotional materials featuring poll results being distributed by rival candidate Jeong Won-oh's camp, calling them "a clear violation of the Public Official Election Act."
"Last night, many citizens and party members sent tips that Jeong Won-oh's camp had produced and distributed on a large scale promotional materials that arbitrarily manipulated poll results," Park wrote on his Facebook page.
"Upon verification, the figures displayed at the top of the promotional materials were not the official approval ratings published by the polling agency," Park said. "They were recalculated figures that arbitrarily excluded the 'don't know' and 'no response' categories and recomputed only the ratios among candidates."
"Candidate Jeong distributed these figures in large font as if they were his actual approval ratings," Park added. "Such conduct is a clear violation of the Public Official Election Act."
Park also cited Article 96, Paragraph 1 of the Public Official Election Act, which states that "no person shall distort and publish or report the results of an election-related opinion poll." He said, "Therefore, survey results must be quoted as they are."
"Re-editing and publishing figures in a way that favors a specific candidate is an act of distortion that clouds voters' judgment," Park added.
Park further noted that "although a small note reading 'percentage redistribution' was added at the bottom, this is merely a visual trick sufficient to mislead ordinary voters." He said the promotional materials "are being indiscriminately distributed across SNS group chat rooms with thousands of participants."
"This kind of behavior is entirely unbecoming of the Democratic Party," Park said. "I ask candidate Jeong Won-oh to compete in the primary fairly and cleanly, in a manner befitting the Democratic Party."
Jeong Won-oh's camp pushed back, saying "there is no 'falsification' or 'distortion' prohibited by election law — only percentage redistribution was applied." The camp explained, "The reason redistributed percentage figures were presented is that the general public opinion poll component of the Democratic Party's primary voting method is determined by figures that inherently exclude 'don't know' and 'no response' answers." The camp added, "During last year's presidential election, there were also media reports that similarly used redistributed percentage figures under the expression 'valid respondents.'"