Dear reader, how have you been? After a revamp, Jeom-seon-myeon is back after a month. We missed you!

The first letter of the returning Jeom-seon-myeon is about the 6·3 local elections just around the corner. While candidates are waging fierce campaigns every day, did you know there are quite a few constituencies where campaigning does not happen at all? These are ‘uncontested districts’, where the winner is determined before voting because, for example, only one candidate is running.

This phenomenon is also connected to deep-rooted problems in Korean politics. The issue of uncontested districts cannot be seen merely as a simple ‘walkover’. Jeom-seon-myeon takes a closer look.

There are two cases in which a district becomes uncontested. Either only one candidate runs in the district, or in elections for basic councilors (city·county·district councilors) where 2~5 people are elected per district, the number of candidates is smaller than the district’s seat allotment. This occurs especially often in elections for heads of basic local governments and for local councilors. In presidential elections, even if there is only one candidate, a yes-or-no vote is required, so being elected without a vote is impossible.

In this 9th local election, there are 307 uncontested districts. A total of 513 candidates filed in uncontested districts. Taking into account cases where, in proportional representation elections for local councils, only one party registered candidates but the number exceeds the seat allotment (for example: Party A has 3 proportional candidates while the district has 2 seats), the final number of winners is expected to be 504.

From the perspective of democracy, this is not a desirable phenomenon. Uncontested wins fundamentally infringe the voting and political rights of voters in those districts. Moreover, uncontested wins are deeply connected with vulnerabilities in the Korean political and electoral system, such as regionalism and polarization between the two major parties.

Uncontested wins mainly occur when a landslide victory by one party is expected and other parties do not field candidates. Therefore, in regions where a particular party is dominant, such as Yeongnam and Honam, many uncontested winners belong to the two major parties. Of the 504 expected winners in this local election, excluding one Progressive Party candidate, 306 are from the Democratic Party and 197 are from the People Power Party.

Backroom arrangements by the two parties also accelerate this trend. District boundaries for basic council elections are decided by metropolitan·provincial councils, and councilors from the two parties often split a district that could elect four members into ‘two-member districts’. It is then common for the two parties to take one seat each, or for one party to take both seats.

As political polarization has deepened, the number of uncontested winners has steadily increased. The number of uncontested winners, which was 48 in the 4th local elections when the party-nomination system for basic councilors was introduced, rose to 490 in the 8th, and has surpassed 500 in the 9th. This time, even in Siheung, Gyeonggi Province, the Democratic Party candidate for mayor was elected without a vote. It is the first uncontested win for a basic local government head in the capital region with a population of 500,000 or more.

Uncontested wins also restrict residents’ right to know. An uncontested winner cannot conduct any campaign activities. It also becomes difficult to reflect residents’ opinions in policies or pledges. You end up having to choose the politician who will represent your life without being able to ask or scrutinize.

If this situation continues, grassroots democracy will wither, and only polarization between the two major parties will intensify. Politicians will also lose incentives to care about voters. In North Jeolla, where 66% of provincial assembly districts became uncontested, Kim Chang-hyo, a senior reporter at Kyunghyang Shinmun, wrote in a column, “In a structure where nomination effectively equals election, the people local councilors pay attention to are more likely to be nominators than citizens.”

There are discussions about institutional reform. Experts propose holding a yes-or-no vote even for a sole candidate, expanding ‘three-member districts’, and broadening the application of the multi-member district system. The ‘Single Transferable Vote’, in which voters rank their 1st to 3rd preference candidates, is also worth attention.

The political establishment has quietly shelved reform debates once elections end; can it be different this time? In an editorial, Kyunghyang Shinmun wrote, “We hope the political establishment will begin discussions on revising the election law as soon as the local elections end,” and added, “The two major parties should not turn a blind eye to the point that you cannot speak of democracy and balanced development if you roll back local self-governance.” We are curious about what you think too!

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