= NEC held a security advisory committee consisting of nominees from political parties with a negotiating body in the National Assembly and relevant experts =

The National Election Commission (NEC) of the Republic of Korea held the 7th nationwide simultaneous local election Security Advisory Committee meeting on May 14 and inspected and verified the software of the ballot sorting machines and the security system of the integrated voters list used in early voting.

Since the 18th presidential election, The NEC has formed and operated a security advisory committee before each election in order to objectively evaluate and verify the integrity and security of various election equipment and systems to build trust in elections.

The Security Advisory Committee for these local elections will consist of 11 experts, including a nominee each from the five political parties with a negotiating body in the National Assembly, scholars, and representatives IT related public institutions and civic groups.  

Park Yeong-soo, the Deputy Secretary General of the NEC, said that ‘since seven different levels of local elections are being held together, the integrity and security of the election equipment and system should be secured.’

At the meeting, the give nominees from the political parties together with the Chief Election Officer of the NEC created security card masters keys for each of the ballot sorting machines and stored them together with top-level security cards to prevent them from being changed arbitrarily.

In addition, the Security Advisory Committee confirmed the process of creating, sealing, and storing master keys, and participated directly in all processes, including the generation of security cards for verification and modulation, after installation of the operation program. 

The NEC announced that “this election will be carried out at around 3,500 early voting polling stations, 14,000 regular polling stations, 254 counting stations and voting and counting will be managed by around 600,000 staff” adding that “these local elections will be more complicated than any other election.”