In any other country, if a referendum were held and 94 percent of those who voted approved it, it would be considered a great success. That is not the case in Taiwan, however, which has unusually high requirements for success.
For the results of a referendum to be valid, 50 percent of all eligible voters must pick up and cast a ballot in a referendum, and 50 percent of those who cast a ballot must approve it.
Herein lies the problem. The first big hurdle for the UN referendums, which were held in conjunction with the presidential election, was to garner 50 percent of all eligible voters -- not 50 percent of the voters who cast ballots in the election.
That meant that since not all eligible voters turned out for the election, the referendum was already in danger of not passing.
Referendums have various requirements. They may or may not have a prerequisite that voter turnout be a certain percentage of the electorate. The Danish model requires 40 percent of the electorate. In some cases, a referendum can pass simply if the majority of those who vote approve it and there have been cases where a referendum has passed with as little as 8 percent of the electorate voting.
The Canadian government does not accept referendums as automatically binding; Quebec's referendum to secede from Canada in 1995 required a simple "50 percent plus one" majority. It barely missed the mark and had many worried.
Taiwan has had six referendums since it began directly electing its president and not one of these has passed. They have all failed, not because the majority of those voting did not approve them, but because an insufficient number of those eligible to vote picked up ballots. This is what happened to the two referendums on applying for UN membership.
In the referendum proposed by the Democratic Progressive Party, 6,201,677 people cast ballots and 5,529,230 approved the referendum. Another 352,359 people turned it down and 320,088 cast invalid ballots. The approval rate was 94.01 percent. Yet while more than 5.5 million people approved it, the referendum needed more than 8 million voters for the results to be valid.
A similar defeat was dealt to the UN referendum proposed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Its approval rate was 87.27 percent.
The purpose of referendums is to express the public's opinion, but because of the requirements, the results may be misinterpreted. There may be many reasons why eligible voters did not pick up ballots. Referendums may be used to mobilize voters towards a party's agenda.
If one party proposes a referendum, the opposition can counter it by encouraging voters not to pick up a ballot. In this way, party voters will not go on record as voting against a given proposition, but they will nevertheless have defeated the referendum simply by denying it sufficient voters.
In recent polls, more than 80 percent of the public said the nation should have representation at the UN, yet most eligible voters did not pick up ballots in the UN referendums.
Laws governing referendums must be reformed to ensure that referendums can be employed to gauge public opinion.
Until that happens, many -- including foreign media -- can easily misinterpret the results of the UN referendums and other plebiscites in Taiwan.
Jerome Keating is a Taiwan-based writer.
The US Senate’s passage of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which urges Taiwan’s inclusion in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise and allocates US$1 billion in military aid, marks yet another milestone in Washington’s growing support for Taipei. On paper, it reflects the steadiness of US commitment, but beneath this show of solidarity lies contradiction. While the US Congress builds a stable, bipartisan architecture of deterrence, US President Donald Trump repeatedly undercuts it through erratic decisions and transactional diplomacy. This dissonance not only weakens the US’ credibility abroad — it also fractures public trust within Taiwan. For decades,
The government and local industries breathed a sigh of relief after Shin Kong Life Insurance Co last week said it would relinquish surface rights for two plots in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) to Nvidia Corp. The US chip-design giant’s plan to expand its local presence will be crucial for Taiwan to safeguard its core role in the global artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem and to advance the nation’s AI development. The land in dispute is owned by the Taipei City Government, which in 2021 sold the rights to develop and use the two plots of land, codenamed T17 and T18, to the
The ceasefire in the Middle East is a rare cause for celebration in that war-torn region. Hamas has released all of the living hostages it captured on Oct. 7, 2023, regular combat operations have ceased, and Israel has drawn closer to its Arab neighbors. Israel, with crucial support from the United States, has achieved all of this despite concerted efforts from the forces of darkness to prevent it. Hamas, of course, is a longtime client of Iran, which in turn is a client of China. Two years ago, when Hamas invaded Israel — killing 1,200, kidnapping 251, and brutalizing countless others
Taiwan’s first case of African swine fever (ASF) was confirmed on Tuesday evening at a hog farm in Taichung’s Wuci District (梧棲), trigging nationwide emergency measures and stripping Taiwan of its status as the only Asian country free of classical swine fever, ASF and foot-and-mouth disease, a certification it received on May 29. The government on Wednesday set up a Central Emergency Operations Center in Taichung and instituted an immediate five-day ban on transporting and slaughtering hogs, and on feeding pigs kitchen waste. The ban was later extended to 15 days, to account for the incubation period of the virus
RSS