Coronavirus: South Korea shows elections are feasible – but change is inevitable

In the short term, Covid-19 will cause great uncertainty for candidates and the public alike. But they will find new and novel ways to campaign and even vote

Voters wearing masks maintain social distancing while waiting in line at a polling station during parliamentary elections in Seoul last week. Bloomberg

How do you hold elections when much of the globe is in lockdown? This is a question that has had to be confronted in several different parts of the world very recently. In mid-March, France went to the polls for the first round of local elections for cities, towns and villages; but then President Emmanuel Macron announced restrictions on movement, which meant that the second, conclusive round will not now be held before June at the earliest.

South Korea has just held what is generally considered to be a model for how to conduct a general election during the pandemic. Every person turning up to vote had their temperature taken, had to wear a mask, had their hands sanitised and was then given a clean pair of gloves to wear. Markers were laid out for people to distance socially, with wardens ensuring this was observed. Separate polling stations were set up for coronavirus patients with mild symptoms. Those with more serious symptoms could vote via post, while people who were in quarantine had an hour to vote after the polls had closed for everyone else.

Supporters of parliamentary election candidate Hwang Kyo-ahn of the main opposition United Future Party cheer during his street campaign, April 10, Seoul, South Korea. Chung Sung-Jun/Getty

At a cafeteria in Seoul on April 9, employees eat behind protective screens as part of preventative measures at the offices of Hyundai Card credit card company that has implemented reduced working hours and staggered lunch breaks, while South Korea has seen a continued decline in new virus cases. Ed Jones/ AFP

A visitor walks through a field of tulips and rapeseed flowers on Jeju Island, South Korea, 09 April 2020. South Korea on 08 April carried out the destruction of one Jeju's most popular rapeseed flower fields to prevent tourists from flocking to the area amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic EPA

Masks are a common sight on the streets of Seoul, April 10. Chung Sung-Jun/Getty

Supporters of South Korean parliamentary election candidate Lee Nak-yon of the ruling Democratic Party applaud his speech on April 10. Chung Sung-Jun/Getty

People are back on the streets, albeit with masks to protect themselves. Chung Sung-Jun/Getty

Gongpyeong road in downtown Daegu, some 300km southeast of Seoul, South Korea, 10 April, after the city reported zero new Covid-19 cases the day before. The city that has been the center of the coronavirus outbreak in the country is starting to show signs of returning to normal. EPA

Hongdae, an area of western Seoul popular for its vibrant, youthful atmosphere, South Korea, 10 April. EPA

A South Korean patient of Covid-19 arrives to cast her ballot for the parliamentary election at a polling station set up at a quarantine centre in Yongin, April 11. Kim Hong-Ji/ Reuters

Health workers disinfect a street to curb the spread of coronavirus, Daegu, South Korea, 11 April. EPA

Workers drive tractors to upend a rapeseed flower field in Busan, South Korea, 10 April. The flowers were destroyed to prevent tourists from flocking to the area. EPA

By contrast, in America, the vote for the Supreme Court in the state of Wisconsin, which took place earlier this month, was seen as a disaster. The Democratic Party wanted it to be postponed as non-essential businesses had already been ordered to shut down, but the Republican Party lawmakers insisted it go ahead anyway.

Hundreds of thousands of postal votes had to be discounted or did not arrive in time. In the city of Milwaukee, there was such a shortage of polling workers that the city could only run five election stations compared with the 180 it normally has open. Lines were long and the state was able to provide nothing like the safeguards that were insisted upon in South Korea, leading to accusations that citizens were having to risk their lives in order to exercise their right to vote.

This is a dilemma that many others will have to face sooner or later. Singapore is expected to hold elections soon. Americans are due to vote for their next president in November. And even if most countries decide not to delay, it is clear that the nature of these elections is going to be very different.

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong might announce holding elections earlier than usual. AP Photo

The US race for the White House effectively lasts almost two years – Senator Bernie Sanders announced his bid for the Democratic nomination in February 2019, for instance – so we have had plenty of time to witness the stark contrast between the rallies and press-fleshing of retail politics as we have always known it, and the new normal.

If the candidates are responsible, there can be no more mass gatherings, no more knocking on doors or meeting-and-greeting. This is bad news for the Democratic presumptive nominee, Joe Biden, whose greatest strength is supposed to be his personal touch. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, gets to speak to the nation every day when he provides his coronavirus updates.

People listen as Democratic presidential candidate, and former vice president, Joe Biden speaks during an event in Ames, Iowa. AFP

With no traditional campaigning going on, exposure in the media – both new and old – will matter all the more. Psephologists have long argued about the extent to which newspapers influence voting behaviour, but there is no doubt that coverage can shape opinion to a certain extent – as the UK's former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, found to his cost after being consistently trashed not only by journals of the right but also by the country's left-leaning Guardian newspaper.

There is the potential while this pandemic remains with us for incumbents to look authoritative and presidential, to strike a “father of the nation” pose. In their very different ways, President Trump and the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have both assumed this mantle, and many think that Singapore’s leader Lee Hsien Loong may be counting on this if he holds polls many months before April 2021 when he legally has to.

A cleaner wearing personal protective equipment disinfects a bus at a terminal in Coatepec, Veracruz state, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. AFP

An Indian traffic officer stands beside a coronavirus-themed globe at a traffic junction as he checks commuters travelling during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown in Hyderabad. AFP

A man uses a sewing machine to assemble a piece of personal protective equipment at a factory in Accra, Ghana. AFP

Graves for Indonesian victims of the coronavirus are seen from the air in Bogor, West Java. AFP

Nepalese sanitation workers in Kathmandu line up after receiving new personal protective equipment. EPA

A nurse arrives to test a resident of the Christalain home for the elderly in Brussels, Belgium. AFP

A 2,500-bed field hospital for victims of the coronavirus has been set up inside Tecnopolis, a science, technology and culture park, in Villa Martelli, Buenos Aires, Argentina. AFP

Healthcare workers of Jacobi Medical Center hold a rally against a new paid sick leave policy by NYC Health + Hospitals that mandates staff who are sick present a doctor's note. AFP

People walk through a market in Bayrampasa, Istanbul, Turkey. AFP

A worker disinfects the floor of a supermarket in Pristina, Kosovo. AFP

A homeless sleeps in front of closed shops in Paris, France. AFP

A policeman patrols Chinatown in Bangkok, Thailand. AFP

A security officer checks the temperature of a porter before taking him to a quarantine centre in Colombo, Sri Lanka. AFP

A pharmacy assistant inside a UK Boots store prepares medicines for a cyclist to deliver to vulnerable people in east London. AFP

A patient infected with the coronavirus is transferred back to intensive care after his condition worsened at the Emile Muller hospital in Mulhouse, France. AFP

An employee demonstrates precautionary measures on the assembly line at the PSA Peugeot Citroen plant in Trnava, Slovakia. AFP

This inevitably sidelines opposition leaders, who are also hampered by the fact that if we are all supposed to be banding together, it is tricky for anyone to criticise too harshly without sounding overly and inappropriately partisan.

South Korea's Moon Jae-in, whose approval ratings only last October were at a record low, appears to have benefited from the greater platform the pandemic has given him. But it helps, of course, that his country looks to have handled the virus more successfully so far than any other. If the US has an outsize number of deaths as 2020 draws to an end, Mr Trump may get the blame instead of the laurels.

Our cartoonist Shadi Ghanim's take on the recent Wisconsin election.

Then there is the question of voting itself. There is the possibility of going 100 per cent postal. But in an age of ever higher internet penetration, and to minimise the risk of infection, it surely makes sense for populations to be able to vote via mobile phones and computers. If much of importance was already being conducted online, we are now having to do even more. Why not elections – which would also benefit from greater speed and, one hopes, accuracy?

Part of me wonders whether casting a ballot electronically can feel as weighty as travelling to a polling station, proving your identity and making your decision in the privacy of the booth. Similarly, as a former teenage party activist, politics without canvassing, personal interaction with voters, the camaraderie of the committed and the long agonies of election night as the results take hours to come in, sounds sterile and lacking in passion by comparison.

A politics without canvassing, personal interaction with voters, the camaraderie of the committed and the long agonies of election night sounds sterile. Reuters

And yet, a more sterile world is just what are all going to have to get used to, for months if not years. If elections are to continue and countries cannot manage the full-service South Korea brought to theirs, e-voting could become the norm. Older people may find it somewhat soulless. But on a more optimistic note, the young may soon find stories of how we used to cast our ballots as quaint – and incomprehensible – as recollections of how we once had to tune television sets and ask the operator to connect an international telephone call.

Coronavirus will force us to adapt again. The good news is that this is something humanity has proved quite good at, even if we grumble as we do it.

Sholto Byrnes is a commentator and consultant in Kuala Lumpur and a corresponding fellow of the Erasmus Forum