Scotland held a referendum on independence from the UK on Sept. 18. From observations during the vote-counting process, perhaps the independence camp was not fully prepared for the process, because it did not send its own observers to polling stations.
For example, there were reports of alleged misconduct, with irregularities such as ballot boxes being left unwatched, counters neglecting to sign record sheets, ballots supporting independence being mistakenly placed on the table for boxes for the “no” campaign and workers seen marking ballots — all captured on camera.
For the referendum, all the ballot boxes were first centralized for vote counting, but the boxes were not semi-transparent and their sources not specified when workers’ signatures were absent. The sheets that specified the voting addresses were unsealed and could be replaced. Such a vote-counting process was careless and it would have caused a protest if it had happened in a new Asian democracy.
As Russian Public Institute for Election Rights chairman Igor Borisov said, workers in Edinburgh in fact counted ballots in a cavernous hangar. For the observers around the hangar, it was impossible to see what was going on at counting tables,” he said.
The centralized method of tallying votes can be seen only in Afghanistan or Nepal — where basic infrastructure is seriously lacking — because those developing nations might worry about sudden blackouts during the process.
Unlike the fractious debates between the two camps prior to the vote, the people in Scotland were not so enthusiastic about monitoring the vote-counting process.
Even in such nations as Thailand and the Philippines, where people trust their government agencies and electoral workers, all nongovernmental organizations know that it is necessary to send their own observers to polling stations. In comparison, the Scottish observers did as they were told and merely monitored the vote-counting process with telescopes from afar.
Taiwanese voters do not have to worry about such things, because the Central Election Commission would never allow images of misconduct to appear.
On Tuesday last week, the commission denied the request of an “observers’ alliance” and some other civic groups to allow photographing and filming the vote-counting process at polling stations.
The decision was based on the commission’s interpretation No. 8006 of Oct. 11, 1983, which states: “In order to maintain order at polling stations, people shall be prohibited from photographing or filming the vote-counting process from observation areas.” Thus, both photographing and filming are barred during the process.
How can Taiwanese voters interfere with order at polling stations by photographing or filming the vote-counting process quietly from observation areas?
Chen Chien-fu is chairman of the Taiwan Network for Free Elections.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs