정당공천의 기준으로서 여론조사 활용의 헌법적 문제점

This study aims to examine the technical, theoretical and practical problems of public survey dependent candidate selection within the political parties in Korea and to prove its constitutional limits. Candidate selection in a democratic way is very crucial for the intra-party democracy as well as the representative democracy. Therefore, Constitutional law and National Election Act provide that a political party shall observe the democratic procedure when recommending its member as a candidate for the election. Considering candidate selection within the political parties is also a part of the national election, undemocratic way of selection will have bad effects on the election results and, furthermore, on the state institution which will be organized thereby. Thus, the political parties should neither select candidates for the national election in unclear and undemocratic way nor violate general principles of the election. Nowadays the public survey plays an important role in the entire process of candidate selection within the political parties. From the very fist step of selecting candidates, which is called ‘cut-off’, to the next step of competition among those who passed the cut-off process, the party selects its candidates for the election with reference to the public survey. But it has undeniable technical limits, represents the electorate partially, and, therefore, has a possibility to distort the results of the election. And the application of such survey results on the candidate selection process could violate the voters’ right to select a candidate as well as the candidates’ right to fair competition, too. Furthermore, it could lead to violation of every citizen’s fundamental right to participate in the democratic process of the election, to run for the election, to take a public office, and the party members’ right to participate in the decision-making process within the party.