A recount in the Chungju mayoral race in North Chungcheong Province from the June 3 local elections reconfirmed the victory of Lee Dong-seok of the People Power Party. The vote gap narrowed slightly, but the outcome remained unchanged.
According to the North Chungcheong Election Commission on the 15th, a manual recount of about 108,000 ballots from the Chungju mayoral race was conducted that day at the gymnasium of the Chungju campus of Korea National University of Transportation. The results showed that Lee Dong-seok of the People Power Party received 52,961 votes, while Maeng Jung-seop, the former Democratic Party candidate, received 52,839 votes.
In the ballot count on the 3rd and 4th of last month, Mayor Lee had won 52,962 votes (50.05%) and former candidate Maeng had won 52,838 votes (49.94%). Invalid ballots—those improperly marked or left blank—numbered 2,277.
Through the recount, the vote gap between the two candidates narrowed from 124 to 122, but it did not affect the outcome. Two votes originally counted for Mayor Lee were ruled invalid in the recount, but one vote that had been classified as a Maeng supporter's ballot was reclaimed, resulting in Lee losing only one vote.
The ballots from this election, which had been stored in the Chungju Election Commission warehouse, were loaded onto a chartered bus and moved to the counting site that day under the watch of observers from both sides. Under relevant regulations, city, county, and district election commissions must store ballots for the duration of the term (four years).
Forty-seven officials from election commissions within the province were deployed for the recount. Democratic Party lawmaker Choi Min-hee and People Power Party lawmaker Yoon Sang-hyun also observed the count as observers for their respective camps. The recount results reportedly came out somewhat later than the initially expected 6 p.m. due to objections raised over invalid ballots during the recount process.
Based on the recount results, the election commission is expected to reject the appeal filed by candidate Maeng seeking to nullify the Chungju mayoral election result.
