A plan by the Taipei City Government to make voters line up twice to vote in the presidential election and in the referendum violates the principle of secret voting and damages voters' civil rights, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilors said yesterday.
The councilors went to Taipei City's Election Commission to protest the city government's plans and submitted a statement to the vice chairman of the commission Wang Shi-chung (
"Taipei City Government is trying to influence voters' behavior with this technical measure. It is against the Central Election Commission's regulations," said Councilor Lee Chien-chang (
PHOTO: CHEN TZE-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
"The manipulation will force voters to reveal their intention of whether they will vote in the referendum, which violates the secret-ballot principle and damages civil rights," Lee said.
After Yunlin County and Miaoli County announced that they would have separate booths for the presidential election and referendum, Taipei City Bureau of Civil Affairs Director Samuel Wu (吳秀光) said on Saturday that Taipei City was inclined to follow their lead.
Wu said the city government would set up a screen between the two voting booths in about 1,000 voting stations in Taipei City. For another 250 voting locations that are too small to set up a screen, the city government will seek another place for voting in the referendum, Wu said.
Under the measure, voters would receive the presidential ballot first, and then be allowed to vote in the referendum.
Lee said that the city government's measure violated the Central Election Commission's requirement that voters receive the ballots and put them into the voting box at the same time. It also violates the Referendum Law, which bans any action that will hinder voting in the referendum, Lee said.
DPP Councilor Lan Shih-tsung (
He added that it was untenable for Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
"Actually, in 1998, we successfully carried out the election of mayor, legislators and city councilors simultaneously," Lan said. "It was a good demonstration that it is no problem to hold multiple elections."
In response to the DPP's protest, Wu said yesterday that the city government had no political motivation when formulating the measures.
"We just want to finish the voting before 9:30pm and help it go more smoothly," Wu said.
Wang said that if the Central Election Commission opposes the measure, Taipei would back down.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching