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The Democratic Party is reviewing various measures, including the introduction of an independent nomination committee, to overhaul the method of appointing members to the National Election Commission (NEC). The aim is to reform the current system—under which the president, National Assembly, and Supreme Court chief justice each nominate three members—to strengthen the NEC's expertise and political neutrality. However, since the matter requires a constitutional amendment, the party plans to develop an optimal alternative through sufficient discussion and social consensus.
According to political circles on the 2nd, the Democratic Party's task force (TF) for defending citizens' voting rights and reforming the NEC is considering the introduction of an independent nomination committee as one option for overhauling the NEC's composition. A lawmaker belonging to the TF said in a phone call with Seoul Economic Daily, "To reform the NEC, we are comprehensively reviewing measures including having an external independent nomination committee recommend and appoint NEC member candidates," adding, "We plan to proceed with procedures to broadly gather expert opinions in upcoming constitutional amendment debates."
The Democratic Party takes the view that the current NEC member appointment system makes it difficult to sufficiently ensure the commission's expertise and political neutrality. Under the constitution, the president, National Assembly, and Supreme Court chief justice each nominate three NEC members, which the party judges leaves considerable room for the influence of the government and ruling party to be strongly reflected. As a result, the party points out that confirmation hearings for NEC member candidates degenerate into arenas for political strife, while verification of the candidates' expertise and competence is pushed aside. Indeed, at the confirmation hearing held in October last year for Wi Cheol-hwan, the current acting chairman of the NEC, criticism arose that discussion of the candidate's qualifications was insufficient, with the focus skewed toward partisan wrangling over his ties to President Lee Jae-myung.
A consensus is also forming on measures to strengthen the diversity of the NEC's composition. Underlying this is the perception that because the NEC has been operated mainly by legal experts such as judges, this acts as a limitation in responding promptly to special situations such as the recent ballot shortage. At the time of the incident, six of the nine NEC members were legal professionals, a majority. Accordingly, the party argues that expertise and response capacity should be strengthened by increasing the number of NEC members with abundant experience in election and organizational management.
However, some voices call for careful review, as an independent nomination committee could also spill over into controversy over the composition of its recommenders. The TF lawmaker said, "Even if we create a nomination committee, disputes could ultimately arise over who appoints the recommenders and who fills those posts," adding, "It could invite criticism that it's the same old thing."
Separately from the constitutional amendment, the party is also pursuing a plan to establish an "Election Management Evaluation Committee" under a standing committee of the National Assembly. The idea is to set up a body that evaluates overall election management after elections and identifies tasks for institutional improvement. This would strengthen the NEC's accountability and the National Assembly's oversight function. The NEC has proposed to ruling and opposition lawmakers a plan to appoint evaluation committee members, through legislation, based on recommendations from political parties, academia, the legal community, and civic groups.
Meanwhile, the National Assembly's special committee for the parliamentary investigation into the ballot shortage during the June 3 local elections conducted a field inspection on the same day at the ballot-counting site at the Handball Stadium in Olympic Park, Songpa-gu, Seoul. Ruling and opposition committee members arrived at the site around noon, but their actual entry was delayed by more than an hour as protesters blocked them. When the members appeared at the scene, protesters chanted "manual counting of same-day votes," demanding a special counsel investigation led by the opposition. Some protesters lunged at the members in protest and were restrained by police. The members completed the field inspection about 30 minutes after entering the stadium and then left the building.
