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Choi In-ho, director of the general situation room for Lee Nak-yon’s campaign camp, heads to Democratic Party headquarters in Seoul’s Yeouido Monday afternoon in order to submit a formal objection to how the party’s election management committee chose the nominee. (National Assembly pool photo)

On Monday, Lee Nak-yon, former head of the Democratic Party and the second-place finisher in the party’s presidential primary, officially requested that the party hold a runoff. Lee’s campaign has taken issue with the fact that the party subtracted votes cast for candidates who dropped out midway from the total.

Lee Nak-yon has effectively declared that he’s contesting the results of the primary after Gyeonggi Province Gov. Lee Jae-myung became the party’s nominee the previous day with a slim majority of 50.29% of the total vote.

The party leadership has taken steps to block Lee Nak-yon by declaring Lee Jae-myung the party’s presidential nominee. Figures both inside and outside the party are criticizing Lee Nak-yon for his unprecedented decision to reject the results of the primary as a presidential candidate for the ruling party.

“The results of the primary as announced by the Democratic Party’s election management committee and leadership are in clear violation of the party’s rules and constitution. The leadership must immediately convene its supreme committee to take steps to quickly correct that violation,” lawmakers with Lee Nak-yon’s campaign said during a press conference at the National Assembly on Monday.

The core issue being debated is about how to interpret a clause about vote invalidation in the Democratic Party’s special regulations. Article 59 of the special regulations says, “When a candidate steps down in the middle of the primary, votes cast for that candidate will be invalidated.”

The Democratic Party relied on that clause to invalidate votes cast for Chung Sye-kyun, former prime minister, and Kim Du-kwan, a lawmaker, both of whom stepped down during the primary. That was in line with precedent, since the party had invalidated votes cast for candidates who dropped out midway in previous presidential primaries in 2002, 2007 and 2012.

But Lee Nak-yon argues that only votes cast for candidates who have already withdrawn from the race should be invalidated and that votes cast for those candidates prior to their withdrawal should be regarded as valid. This argument, if accepted, would increase the total number of votes cast (that is, the denominator of the equation), reducing Lee Jae-myung’s share of the vote from 50.29% to 49.32%. That would strip Lee Jae-myung of his outright majority and trigger a runoff against Lee Nak-yon.

Lee Nak-yon claims that he’d raised this issue throughout the primary and asked the party affairs committee for an authoritative interpretation of the clause in question. He also says that the party ignored his request because it regarded Lee Jae-myung’s lead in the primary as being so great that the invalidated votes wouldn’t come into play.

“The party’s election management committee announced that they were valid votes at the time, but it suddenly eliminated valid votes cast for the two candidates. If that was deliberate, it was election rigging. But even if it wasn’t deliberate, it’s still a mistake,” said Kim Jong-min, a lawmaker and chair of the political reform and vision committee for Lee Nak-yon’s campaign.

It doesn’t seem very likely that the party will accept Lee Nak-yon’s objection. Democratic Party leader Song Young-gil said on Monday that “our party officially announced yesterday that Lee Jae-myung is our presidential candidate, and I have delivered my letter of recommendation.” On top of that, Chung Sye-kyun and Kim Du-kwan, the former candidates whose invalidated votes are at issue, have both endorsed Lee Jae-myung.

“Sticking to principles is the first step toward victory,” Chung remarked.

“Taking issue with the rules themselves after the primary is over only foments division within the Democratic Party. I expect that Lee Nak-yon will make the right decision,” Kim said.

Lee Nak-yon’s decision to contest the results of the primary despite criticism that he’s refusing to concede has prompted complaints. Some think he’s trying to stay in the game just in case there’s a vacancy for the party’s presidential nominee. According to this theory, Lee Nak-yon may be working to weaken Lee Jae-myung’s legitimacy as the presidential nominee because of the possibility that Lee Jae-myung’s campaign might be derailed by the results of a criminal investigation into allegations of preferential development in the Daejang neighborhood in the city of Seongnam, where Lee previously served as mayor.

That would help explain Lee Nak-yon’s comments in a political speech during the Seoul primary on the previous day. He said, “Corruption in the development of the Daejang neighborhood, which spans both the ruling and the opposition parties, is casting a shadow on the future of the Democratic Party. That could lead to the kind of complicated crisis that we’ve never experienced before.”

Some sources in the Democratic Party think that Lee Nak-yon’s objections won’t lead to an actual rejection of the primary results. “This is probably his campaign’s way of expressing their frustration that the primary almost got to a runoff but didn’t quite make it,” one lawmaker said.

But others are critical of the unprecedented nature of the leading candidate in the ruling party moving to contest the results of the primary. They think that this could not only trigger conflict inside the party but also weaken its cause in the main election. If Lee Nak-yon’s objections to the primary results become protracted, they’re sure to impact the party’s preparations for the general election, an outcome for which Lee would likely be blamed.

The party leadership believes that Lee Nak-yon is making an unreasonable request considering that the party concluded in two debates during the primary that it couldn’t offer a different interpretation of Article 59 of the special regulations. The party’s election management committee previously reached the unanimous decision that there was nothing wrong with invalidating the votes cast for candidates who had stepped down.

“Members of the Supreme Council who are on [Lee Nak-yon’s] side have already raised the issue numerous times, but our review is over. This has to be seen as a political move. Since there’s a significant gap between the two candidate’s vote counts, I rather think we ought to deal with this firmly,” a member of the party leadership said.

Lee Nak-yon received 39.14% of the vote, finishing 11.15 points behind Lee Jae-myung.

But the leadership’s calculations will likely be complicated by the need to set up a unified election action committee before the presidential election. If the leadership ignores the objections that Lee Nak-yon has officially lodged or treats him harshly, it may have trouble incorporating his faction into the election action committee.

For that reason, one option that’s reportedly being discussed is having Song, the party leader, meet with Lee Nak-yon to personally ask him to join the team.

“We’re still deciding about how to politically resolve the objections that have been raised by Lee Nak-yon’s campaign,” a member of the party leadership said.

By Shim Wu-sam and Seo Young-ji, staff reporters

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