A Study on the Overseas Voting System through Korean Voter’s Thoughts and Attitudes in LA, Orange County

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

An overseas election system was in fact introduced earlier in Korean history (1966). However, it was abolished and fundamental principles of democracy were largely ignored by authoritarian regimes for a long time before recent steps were taken toward their reinstatement. However, due to the rather abrupt reinstatement of overseas voting procedures, there are numerous legal loopholes to be found in the current overseas election system.
Since revising the Public Official Election Act of February 2009, many bills have been proposed at the National Assembly to revise legislation and correct imperfections in the overseas election system. Moreover, many in Korean academia are currently engaged in active discussion and the essence of their discussions regards the means to promote an increase in the voting rate and ensure fairness. While the issues of ensuring adequate participation and fairness cannot be addressed by a simplistic application of popular sovereignty doctrine, there is certainly an implication here of urgent legislative tasks which must be addressed.
In this respect, this research is a survey and an analysis of the consciousness and attitudes of Korean citizens living abroad on the topic of election participation and fair election management, from the perspective of the institutional theory of election that election systems affect voting behaviors. Moreover, based on findings of empirical studies that the behavior of voters influences election results and thus ultimately brings about changes in election systems, this research will identify problems in the current overseas election system and immediate tasks to be dealt with by leveraging the empirical analysis of the survey on the consciousness and attitude of overseas Koreans on election.
It should be noted that in the end the rate of participation is largely determined by the basic attitude and consciousness of the voters regarding elections. To precisely understand these attitudes, the following questions were asked during our survey, which are related to the voters’ sense of obligation to vote; belief in the efficacy of overseas voting; consciousness of one’s sovereignty; intent to participate in the vote; reason for abstention where applicable and criteria of choosing a candidate:
Fair election management is also largely dependent on the attitudes of voters about unfair elections, along with institutional and environmental factors. To understand the thoughts and attitudes of Korean overseas voters regarding fair elections, interviewers asked the following questions associated with the respondents’ perception of election wrongdoing, willingness to participate in the election process and activities, intended reactions when experiencing illegal campaign practices and awareness of the types of illegal campaign practices:
To analyze the pending issues in the overseas election system, this study examined two areas, highlighting overseas Korean citizens’ preferences of voting methods and the preferred areas of suffrage extension.
Numerous initiatives are called for: first, a legislative revision bill already proposed at the National Assembly that would allow voting by mail and increase the number of voting places in foreign countries; second, legislative measures which were omitted in earlier legislative revisions made in response to the Constitutional Court’s 2007 ruling, to allow the application of overseas election to referendums and absentee voting for sailors. Additionally, institutional measures that need to be addressed as quickly as possible include the introduction of public management of election campaigns in overseas elections, the introduction of a semipermanent list of overseas voters and implementing educational programs for overseas elections.
Mid- to long-term legislative tasks would include granting voting rights to holders of dual nationalities, allocating seats in the National Assembly for overseas Korean communities (

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