Before the Jan. 14 presidential and legislative elections, I suggested to some non--governmental organizations that together with pan-blue, pan-green and academic groups, they should ask presidential and legislative candidates from all parties to sign a pledge to promote a party primary system similar to the one used in certain US states.
Such a system would require the government to organize primaries on the same day for all parties that pass a certain threshold. It would also allow people to participate in the democratic process at a different level.
There would be four main elements to such a system. First, people would cast a single ballot at a neighborhood polling station. Second, each ballot would be divided into sections listing the names of the candidates for each party without their photographs. Third, voters would only be able to choose a candidate from one party. Fourth, ballots with more than one party or one candidate marked would be invalid.
Because Taiwan has a household registration system, it would be easier to implement such a primary system than in the US, where voters have to register before they are eligible to vote.
Such a system could help increase political participation and solve the disputed nature of opinion polls and the lack of legitimacy in party politics. It could also help resolve the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) problem with dummy party members and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) problem with a few bigwigs who are elected each cycle without fail.
As far as these suggestions go, one organization decided to raise them with former DPP chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) so she could include them in her policy platform, but she never did.
Another organization said that this suggestion would not go down well within the DPP because some of the people in the central leadership owe their positions to dummy party members, and that while they might pay lip service to such a suggestion, they would then work to ensure it is never implemented.
The KMT and the DPP have both adopted primary opinion polls in some constituencies, which shows that both parties recognize the need for a fair mechanism to handle problems created by their existing primary election systems.
For the sake of party politics and democracy, legislators from the KMT, the DPP, the People First Party and the Taiwan Solidarity Union should take these recommendations on board and cooperate to push through an historic change to the nation’s electoral system.
Lin Chia is an economist.
Translated by Drew Cameron
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