Special counsel team moves local election ballots to storage from handball arena

A special counsel team on Thursday moved boxes of ballot papers 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. 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 some 420 boxes, of which all but 13 were taken to a storage facility managed by the NEC in the capital area, a commission official said. In accordance with the election law, those ballots will be stored for the duration of the elected officials' te