Taichung, 8:05am
Finishing their morning exercises in Yingtsai Park, a group of elderly women swung their arms and chattered excitedly, looking not unlike a gaggle of geese in their black and white exercise uniforms.
On a normal day, the group would part company after their morning meeting, but this day they finished off with one last exercise: voting. A community center in the corner of the park had been converted into a polling station. Police officers had just opened the doors and perched themselves on plastic stools outside. They were there to guard the ballot boxes and keep the peace following one of the least peaceful days in Taiwan's history.
But although Friday was a fireworks frenzy of campaigning that climaxed in an attempt on the president's life, the polls were relatively quiet on election day. The shouting match had fallen silent. The only commotion here was coming from the group of women making their way through the park to the community center, swinging their arms and scaring birds out of sakura trees.
Perhaps it was quiet because this area in the heart of Taichung City leans heavily toward the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and it's candidate, Lien Chan (連戰).
You could almost figure the demographics yourself watching people as they lined up to vote. The group of a dozen uniformed ladies joined the line and one by one disappeared behind the white curtains. A few of them, though, lingered in the courtyard before getting in line.
"They can go first," said Wang Pei-juan (王珮娟) as she chatted with three other women. The reason became apparent when the first set of women was seen casting their presidential ballots and immediately exiting the polling station. Wang and her smaller clique cast their presidential ballots, then disappeared behind a second set of curtains to vote in the nation's first referendum, which the incumbent candidate, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has strongly promoted and the opposition has boycotted.
"It's unfair that the [Central Election Commission] has demanded that the ballots be separated," Wang later said. "They say it will prevent many problems, but it creates other problems." She explained that many households were as divided as the nation itself and to have to go behind curtains twice made a person's choices less than secret.
Her fears may have been unfounded. Another woman coming out of the polling station later in the morning, Jenny Hsieh, said that even though she voted for Lien, she cast her vote in the referendum, too. This was the first election the 30-something bar owner had ever voted in -- the first one she was able to vote, having come from China 10 years ago.
"I voted in the referendum because I could," she said, without revealing how she answered the two questions. And what did she think of Taiwan's heated democracy and Friday's assassination attempt?
"They missed," she said.
Xinchang Borough, Hsichih, Taipei County, 10:30am
Under a dreary, dark sky and slight drizzle, voters of the Xinchang Borough in the Taipei satellite city of Hsichih yesterday morning were greeting neighbors and lining up to vote as they filed into the local Land God temple, which had been converted into a polling station. Some dutifully stopped to make three bows as they passed the altar before joining the short queue, though most made quick work of voting and left within minutes.
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