Voters have begun casting their ballots in polling stations nationwide on Wednesday in an exercise of their democratic rights to elect officials in local elections and parliamentary by-elections underway.
From 6 a.m., 14-thousand-465 polling booths were opened for the electorate to choose officials in more than four-thousand posts at various government levels.
The local elections will fill up 824 posts in large cities and provinces, including governors, mayors, education chiefs and council members. In addition, 226 officials to head smaller cities, counties and districts will be selected. Some 29-hundred municipal level seats will also be filled.
By-elections for seven empty seats at the National Assembly are also being concurrently held.
Some 44-point-three million people are eligible to vote in this round of local elections, up by one-point-39 million from the last local elections in 2018. The figure is also some 105-thousand more than the electorate in the March presidential election.
A two-day early voting period on Friday and Saturday had already recorded a turnout of 20-point-62 percent, a fresh high, raising expectations the final voter turnout could also be high.
Voters who tested positive for COVID-19 will be given a voting window after the general public from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Vote counting is expected to commence at 8 p.m. with clear winners likely to surface by midnight.
Amid a mixture of calls to support the Yoon Suk Yeol administration and rivaling calls for the main opposition Democratic Party(DP) to keep the new government in check, the ruling People Power Party(PPP) projects it will claim nine to ten out of the 17 gubernatorial and mayoral posts up for grabs. The DP, on its part, targets to win seven to eight of them.
Source: KBS World
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