마스크•장갑 중무장…제21대 국회의원선거 개표
As we gradually get a clearer picture of the candidates who have been able to win over voters... it's turning out to be a long night for election workers,... who have been focused on the all important task of counting ballots.
Our Kim Dami joins us live from one of the counting centers in Seoul.
Dami, roughly three hours into vote counting, how far along are we?
Hi, Conn-young.
As you can see right behind me, hundreds of people are still diligently counting the votes. In the last general election in 2016, it took around 8 hours to get the final results, but this year it's going to take longer.
Here's what we have so far...
As for the ballot count across the nation, as of 11 PM, it stood at 52-point-5 percent.
Breaking it down by the major regions of South Korea...
In Seoul, we stood at 38-point-3 percent.
In Gyeonggi-do 53-point-7 percent.
In Busan 46-point-8 percent.
and Daegu at 43-point-4 percent.
Hopefully, we should be able to see some results taking shape by around 2 AM.
In fact, the National Election Commission predicts that for single member districts, vote counting will end... at around 4 AM.
But for the proportional representation seats, counting will go on until 8 AM, and the final results will be announced on Thursday afternoon.
This is because while the district ballots are counted by machine, the PR ballots this year are too long for the machines, so they have to be counted by hand.
They're so long because this year there are 35 parties, which is a record number.
Across the country there are around 64-thousand vote counters, an increase of 35 percent from the last election.
On top of the need for manual vote counting, things are different this time because of the COVID-19 crisis.
ALL the vote counters are wearing masks and gloves while keeping an appropriate distance from one another.
The top priorities this election are sanition and safety, so the polling stations are ventilated on a regular basis. And any volunteer who feels unwell will leave the facility immediately.
For real-time updates, the National Election Commission is also providing the count online.
That's all from me, Conn-young.
