With less than two weeks to its parliamentary polls, South Korea has announced a new innovative plan to mitigate the impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic on its upcoming elections, allowing patients of the virus vote by mail or as absentees.
Voters in South Korea are set to head to the polls on April 15 to elect candidates to fill in 300 National Assembly seats consisting of 253 directly elected seats and 47 for proportional representation. Here, voters will be allowed to cast two ballots simultaneously – one for a candidate and the other for a political party. Elected representatives will occupy the office for the next four years.
Catering to roughly 4,000 patients within the voting committee, the Interior Minister of South Korea, Chin Young, announced that ballots by mail and absentee voting will be available ahead of the main election date.
“We will guarantee the confirmed patients’ right to vote as much as possible,” he told a briefing, adding that the government was still exploring measures for those who had not tested positive but were in self-quarantine This, however, does not affect citizens living in countries suffering from the virus,” he explained.
The 13-day campaign which kicked off on April 2nd and is set to last until the eve of the polls has seen candidates wearing masks and avoiding crowd driven campaign activities like large rallies and handshakes.
As part of its effort to ensure the safety of voters, the National Election Commission of South Korea has urged voters to wear masks in polling stations, maintain distance between themselves and other voters and make use of the sanitizers and gloves provided by the commission.
Response to the South Korean government’s methods of dealing with the virus has been divided, according to the Korean Times. The ruling Democratic Party (DP) has appealed for voters to support the government’s drive to contain the coronavirus and minimise the economic impact of the outbreak, while Opposition United Future Party (UFP) has stressed the need to “judge” the government, citing its failure to stem the pandemic at an early stage and handle the economic downturn.
According to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), 89 new cases were recorded on the day campaign kicked off bringing the tally of the case to 9,976, while the death toll rose by four to 169. So far, 5,828 have recovered from the virus, with 3,979 still receiving treatment in South Korea.
