It is necessary to draw up lists of eligible voters in all parliamentary electoral districts by next Saturday, two months before the upcoming elections of April 11. The reason is that eligible voters will be qualified to apply for absentee ballots from abroad if they are listed as residing in foreign countries as of Feb. 11.
But the rezoning of more than 10 electoral districts has yet to be completed. No wonder, the National Election Commission is fretting about the delay. In an official letter addressed to the National Assembly, the electoral watchdog demanded that the job of drawing their boundaries anew be completed no later than next Thursday.
An ad hoc committee doing the job came up with a set of proposals on Jan. 30 only to withdraw them in the face of public outcry against what was nothing but horse trading. Moreover, it ignored the Constitutional Court’s 2001 ruling that the size of the electorate of the largest district be smaller than three times that of the smallest district. In the ruling, it also recommended that the maximum permissible gap be reduced to 2 to 1 in due course.
The rezoning process dates back to late last year when an advisory group of outside experts selected 13 districts from the total of 245 for divisions and mergers, reflecting changes in the electoral populaces that had been made during the previous four years. The ad hoc committee was supposed to have worked on the advice from the group.
But what the committee actually came up with fell far short of the recommendation ― evidence that its members engaged in horse trading, as instructed by their parties, and in favor of the incumbent lawmakers affiliated with the parties. No wonder, many cried fraud. Among them were potential candidates that had set their sights on some of the districts for which they suspected the legislature would take no action despite the advisory group’s recommendation that their boundaries be redrawn.
The ad hoc committee placed themselves above the Constitutional Court when it omitted proposing that a district with a population of 367,700 eligible voters be divided into two. Its population is more than 3.5 times that of the smallest district, whose electorate stands at 104,340.
The arbitrary nature of that proposal was thrown into sharp relief by another decision the committee made. Based on an earlier bipartisan agreement, it proposed that Wonju City, a smaller district with a population of 320,330 eligible voters, be divided into two.
The committee was no less audacious when it proposed that a new district be created for Sejong City despite its small population of 94,000 eligible voters ― an administrative town to which ministries and other government agencies are set to be relocated. If such a district were to be created, as proposed, it would also go against the Constitutional Court’s ruling.
Another problem with the committee’s proposals is that if they were enacted, the number of electoral districts would increase by three at a time when many wonder if the nation has too many lawmakers. Indeed, one Korean lawmaker represents 162,000 people on average, compared with one U.S. representative for 700,000.
Apparently well aware of this unfavorable sentiment among the electorate, the committee proposed at the same time that the total be made to remain unchanged by reducing the number of lawmakers selected for proportional representation from the current 54 to 51.
As the electoral commission demanded, members of the ad hoc committee need to hasten their job of redrawing boundaries, instead of delaying it until the last minute, as they have done in the past, in an attempt to serve the interests of their own parties rather than those of the public.
In the longer term, the National Assembly is called on to study a proposal that political parties be banned from exercising influence on the redrawing of district boundaries by leaving the job to a group of independent outside experts. It is also urged to start studying the recommendation that the representational gap be reduced, together with a proposal to reduce the number of electoral districts and increase the number of lawmakers selected for proportional representation.
