STEALING THE VOTES?

Irregularities are surfacing in last week's South Korean presidential election.  In the electronic count the right-wing candidate, Park Geun-hye, won by about 3%.  She is the daughter of the  former military dictator Park Chung-hee and would continue the policies of the disastrous Lee Myung-bak administration.

Normally very reliable exit polls showed a very close race.  In the exit poll by OhMyNews, Moon Jae-in was projected to win the election by a 2.4 percentage point lead, beyond the margin of error.  And in fact, in the exit poll by YTN, Moon was projected to win the election by a 3.6 percentage point lead.  All these exit polls had been taken up until 3:00 pm.

Around 1:00 pm, Park Geun-hye’s conservative Saenuri Party announced they would file a lawsuit to declare invalid election even if Moon won the election, making a false accusation of unlawful acts.  According to some reports made around that time, Park’s camp and Saenuri Party were texting one another, declaring the emergency while Moon’s camp, the Democratic Party, and the supporters were in a festive mood. According to the resources available for reporters, the joint exit poll taken by KBS, MBC, and SBS up until 3:00 pm indicated a 2.2 percentage point lead for Moon (Moon: 50.8%, Park: 48.6%).

In South Korea the tendency is for older, more conservative, people to vote early with the more progressive younger folks voting later in the day - often after exit polling was finished.

Any way you cut it this whole election smells something like some recent presidential elections in the U.S.  Can anyone doubt that paper ballots are the only way to have a fair election?  Electronic voting can be manipulated in some many ways to arrive at a predetermined outcome.  Especially when the big electronics corporations like Samsung and others have direct interests in the outcome of the elections.

I got most of this information from a blog in South Korea.  There is much more to read here