President Lee Jae-myung said Tuesday that if South Korea introduces a runoff system for presidential and other elections, the simultaneous adoption of a preferential voting system would be discussed.
Lee made the remarks on X (formerly Twitter) as he shared a netizen's post questioning why preferential voting was introduced in the Democratic Party's online vote among eligible members to select its next National Assembly Speaker candidate. "I introduced the preferential voting system along with the runoff system when I was the Democratic Party leader. It is a method of conducting a preliminary runoff vote in the first round, eliminating the need for a separate second round when no candidate wins a majority in the first vote," he said.
"In a three-way race, if voters indicate their first and second preferences in advance, the second-choice votes of those who supported the third-place candidate can be added to the first- and second-place finishers in the event of a runoff. This produces the same effect as holding an actual runoff," he added.
Lee said, "The preferential voting system is designed to save the cost and time of a runoff election, although it has the limitation of assuming that voters who chose the first- and second-place candidates in the first round would make the same choice in a runoff." He added, "Voters should be aware that failing to mark a second preference effectively means abstaining from the runoff if their first-choice candidate is eliminated. I hope voters will not misunderstand this and will select both their first and second preferences."
Under the preferential voting system, voters rank all candidates in order of preference, and the winner is determined accordingly. The Democratic Party began its primary to select the next Speaker candidate on Tuesday with the online vote of eligible members. The Speaker candidate will be chosen by combining the online vote of eligible members, which runs through the following day and accounts for 20 percent of the total, with the in-person vote of lawmakers on the 13th, which accounts for 80 percent. The candidates for the Speaker race are Reps. Kim Tae-nyeon, Cho Jeong-sik and Park Jie-won, in order of their declaration.
