Election Controversy: Should Gyeonggi Education Superintendent Candidates Choose Delegate Voting or 100% Public Opinion Polls?

Translation result

The effort to unite progressive candidates ahead of the Gyeonggi provincial education superintendent race has fractured over disagreement about the selection method.

On the 23rd, the campaign committee for An Min-seok, a preliminary candidate for Gyeonggi education superintendent, issued a statement saying that if an electoral-panel vote is adopted, the unification coordinating body must formally and explicitly prohibit unfair practices such as campaigning for a specific candidate and mobilizing organizations.

The committee warned that without such safeguards, the unification should be decided entirely by public opinion polls — a 100% poll-based method — and voiced concerns about the electoral-panel voting approach.

An’s team said that allowing unfair practices to go unchecked would make successful unification unlikely, but stressed it will do its utmost to achieve a single progressive candidate.

In response, Yoo Eun-hye’s campaign strongly denounced An’s stance, calling it an attempt to derail the unification process.

On the same day, Yoo’s spokesperson Park Im-dang said in a statement that the progressive education-superintendent unification is a promise to residents and civic groups, and actions that overturn that pledge are unacceptable.

She criticized the insistence on methods favorable to one side, arguing that combining electoral-panel votes with public polls is already a democratically agreed principle and that rejecting it undermines the spirit of unification.

She also called An’s complaint to the election commission over the recruitment of electoral-panel members a double standard and urged him to withdraw the complaint.

Yoo’s team demanded that the Gyeonggi Education Innovation Coalition, which is overseeing the unification process, take swift and decisive action against any violations of the rules, and announced it will make the unification negotiations fully public.

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