제7회 전국동시지방선거와 관련한공직선거법 상의 몇 가지 쟁점

Abstract

This paper deals with some issues on the Public Official Election Act withreference to the 7th Local Election which was taken place on June 13, 2018. First, according to the current Public Official Election Act Article 59, anycandidate, political party, elector can do election campaign only through internet orSNS on election day. So off-line election campaign on the election day is illegal. Bythe way, since the introduction of advance polling in 2014, there is a conflict of lawin that one can do off-line election campaign on the advance polling day. Thatmeans the above-said restrictive clause does not have any effect to the advancepolling elector(approximately 1/3 of the entire elector). Second, the relationship between local election and the political party. ① There isno reason sticking to the Proportional Representative in local election in light of thecurrent political practices. Not only almost one person is elected each district, butalso the elector can’t access to the political parties’ roll of candidates which result innot representing for the all classes. Professional politician or partisan have a goodreason to occupy the upper position. ② Major political parties shall be preferentiallygiven nationally unified marks by the Act §150(4). This is way too far from thevery nature of local autonomy and strengthen the subordination to the central politics. Third, 89 candidates in total has been walkover elected in this local election. Butthere are some problems in the application of the election walkover under the PublicOfficial Election Act. ① the applicable range of the Act. There are no explicitclauses in the election of Proportional Representative National Assembly Membersand Proportional Representative Local Council Members(§189, §190-2). There are nomutatis mutandis application stipulations to the last two elections. So, walkover decision on Elected Proportional Representative Local Council Members of ElectionCommission is a violation of the Act, and unconstitutional. An elector may file aelection lawsuit. ② Second, the Act explicitly prescribes restriction on electioncampaign is applied to where a candidate resigns or dies or his/her registrationbecomes invalidated, after the registration of candidates is closed, so that the numberof the candidates of the constituency becomes short of the fixed number of themembers to be elected in the constituency and the voting is not held(§275). So, thisclause is not applied to another election walkover case where the candidates do notexceed the fixed number of the council members to be elected in the relevantconstituency at the time when the candidate registration is closed.