ballot shortage-probe

SEOUL, Oct. 29 (Yonhap) -- A special counsel team on Thursday began moving boxes of ballot papers to a storage facility after taking them out of a handball arena where they had been kept since June's local elections, as part of its investigation into ballot shortages on election day, officials said.

Special counsel Lee Tae-han's team removed the ballot boxes from the Olympic Park Handball Gymnasium in southeastern Seoul after conducting an on-site inspection of the 2.47 million ballots for more than 12 hours until past midnight, according to the National Election Commission (NEC), the state election watchdog.

Lee's team has been investigating an unprecedented shortage of ballots that occurred on the day of the June 3 local elections, which forced some people to turn back without casting their votes.

All 2.47 million ballots, which had been cast in the southeastern Songpa Ward, were inspected by the special counsel team and placed in 433 boxes, of which all but 13 were being taken to a storage facility managed by the NEC in the capital area, a commission official said.

The remaining 13 boxes were taken by the special counsel team, and the ballots inside them will be inspected further based on objections raised by on-site observers.

The gymnasium was used as a vote counting center during the elections, but protesters had blocked the ballots' removal since June amid calls for accountability for the shortage and a rerun of the elections.

Lee's team has said the examination will not serve as a recount of the votes and is aimed at determining whether there had been any acts of tampering or forgery.

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