Highest-ever turnout for early voting boosts overall turnout

Voters line up to cast their ballots at a polling station in Seoul's Mapo-gu, Wednesday, in this year's general election to form the 21st National Assembly. Yonhap

By Jung Da-min

The highest-ever turnout for early voting ahead of the April 15 general election led to the highest turnout for overall voting in such an election in 28 years.

As of 6 p.m. Wednesday, the overall turnout reached 66.2 percent, 8.2 percentage points higher than the 58 percent recorded in the previous general election in 2016, and the highest for a general election since 1992, according to the National Election Commission (NEC).

More than 29.1 million out of 43.9 million eligible voters cast ballots at 14,330 polling stations to elect 300 lawmakers to form the 21st National Assembly. The voters cast two ballots, one for the 253 single-member constituencies and the other for the remaining 47 proportional representation seats.

The high turnout is credited to the record-high numbers that participated in early voting despite earlier concerns that people would avoid crowded polling stations over the fear of the COVID-19 infection. The pandemic disrupted overseas voting in many countries in early April ― the turnout for overseas voters recorded 23.8 percent, the lowest since the system was introduced in 2012, and down 17.6 percentage points from 2016.

But the country has recently seen a slowdown in the spread of COVID-19, with new daily cases remaining at around 30 over the past seven days. The turnout for early voting, conducted last Friday and Saturday, was the highest-ever ― 26.69 percent ― since the introduction of the system in 2013.

At polling stations, the NEC carried out special measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, such as temperature checks, providing disposable plastic gloves and operating a separate booth for those with high temperatures or respiratory symptoms.

People self-quarantining at home with no clear symptoms were briefly allowed to leave to cast ballots between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m, a time allocated to ensure they were separate from other voters.

As for overseas voting, the ballot boxes from 17 countries could not be sent to Korea due to lockdowns or flight operation suspensions following host countries' measures against COVID-19. So the vote counting took place at the diplomatic missions there, starting at the same time as counting here. This was the first time that vote counting has been carried out abroad since the overseas vote was introduced.

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