Early voting finished, but voters still confused over too many parties

Officials at North Gwangju District Office examine ballot papers at a meeting room in the office, Monday, two days ahead of the April 15 general election. Courtesy of North Gwangju District Office

By Jung Da-min

More than a quarter of eligible voters for the April 15 general election participated in early voting conducted from Friday to Saturday. However, it seemed many of them were confused by there being “too many” parties listed on the ballot paper for proportional representation, leaving them wondering whether they voted for the actual party they wanted to.

In the general election, voters enter their votes on two ballots, one for the 253 single-member constituencies, and the other for the remaining 47 proportional representation seats. Following a new electoral system aimed to give more proportional representation seats to minor parties, 35 parties ― 14 more than the previous general election ― are participating in the proportional representation vote, giving voters the longest-ever ballot paper at 48 centimeters.

Adding to the complexity of the proportional representation race is that the country's two major parties are not participating directly in it, but created paper “satellite parties” instead, to garner more seats under the new system which was intended to be more favorable to minor parties.

In previous elections, voters could distinguish parties by the numbers given to them according to the number of seats they had. In this year's proportional representation vote, however, the minor opposition Minsaeng Party is listed on the first spot of the ballot paper, while the main opposition United Future Party's (UFP) satellite Future Korea Party is in the second spot and the ruling Democratic Party of Korea's (DPK) satellite party Civil Together has the third spot.

“I did not know there were that many parties,” said Chang Soo-hyun, 27, who voted in Uiseong County, North Gyeongsang Province. “I was confused as it was hard to decide for which party I should cast my ballot in the proportional representation election. I also thought confused people could pick any party randomly as the two major parties were not participating with the first two numbers as they had before.”

Lee Jee-su, 25, a voter in Seoul who also participated in early voting, said it was hard to choose a party for the proportional representation ballot, as there are too many newly established ones and she did not have enough information about their policies. “It was hard to cast a vote as there were too many parties, some of which I've never heard of,” Lee said.

Meanwhile, political watchers say the election results will be harder to predict this time, raising doubts over the accuracy of exit polling.

The turnout for early voting recorded the highest-ever 26.69 percent since the introduction of the system for nationwide elections in 2014. That means about 11.7 million voters have already voted, and, considering the total turnout of previous general elections, the number is likely to be about a third of the entire voter participation. So exit polls to be conducted on about two thirds of the total voters on April 15 are not likely to show the same results, analysts said.

According to the Public Official Election Act, pollsters are allowed to conduct exit polls only on election day and must be at least 50 meters from polling stations.

After early voting closed, the countries' two major parties, the DPK and the UFP, both argued that the outcome would be in their favor.