By Bernama
Seoul : Absentee voting for next week’s parliamentary elections has begun across South Korea with some 825,000 registered voters poised to cast ballots, Yonhap news agency quoted election officials as saying here on Thursday.
Of the 37.8 million eligible voters for the April 9 elections, 825,658, or 2.2 percent, have registered to cast absentee ballots from 10 a.m. Thursday through 4 p.m. Friday, the National Election Commission said.
“The voting is proceeding smoothly thus far,” an election official said.
The number of absentee voters is down 60,083 from the 2004 parliamentary elections and up 15,100 from the presidential election last year, the watchdog added.
Soldiers and police officials accounted for the majority of absentee voters with 605,874, or 73 percent.
The country’s rival parties are engaged in heated parliamentary campaigns with the ruling Grand National Party predicted to secure a solid majority in the 299-member National Assembly.
The conservative party has been leading popularity polls on the back of President Lee Myung-bak’s landslide win in the presidential election last December.
Voters are to cast two ballots — one for the candidate running in their district and the other for the party that they support — with 245 constituencies to be filled via direct votes.
The remaining 54 parliamentary slots will be filled with candidates to be picked in proportion to votes cast to each party.
A total of 1,119 candidates are competing for a parliamentary seat in a 4.5-to-1 competition ratio.
Releasing outcomes of public surveys has also been banned as of Thursday to stave off voters being swayed by poll results.