Taipei City Government's plan to make voters line up twice to vote in the presidential election and the referendum is designed to reduce controversy and disorder on election day and completely conforms to the Cabinet's regulations, city government officials said yesterday.
City councilors from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said on Monday that the city government is trying to influence voters' behavior and force them to reveal their inclination regarding the referendum. The councilors demanded the city government to stop its interference with the election.
"Many people mistakenly believe that the city government intentionally designed voting regulations which differ from those of the Central Election Commission," said city government spokesman Wu Yu-sheng (
According to the city's plan, voters need to cast their presidential ballot first, and will then be allowed to vote in the referendum.
Wu said that Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
"The plan that the city government proposed was referred to in the brochure on election regulations printed by the Cabinet," Wu said. "Our plan completely conforms to the regulations of the Central Election Commission."
Wu said that the city decided not to set up a screen between the two voting booths because it violates the central government's regulations.
However, the city government believes that the separation of the two voting booths is necessary.
"The city government is trying to reduce possible confusion, mistakes and controversies on the election day," Wu added.
The city's Bureau of Civil Affairs will formally discuss tomorrow whether to separate the voting booths for the presidential election and the referendum in voting stations. If the bureau makes a resolution, then it will submit the plan to Taipei's Election Commission on Friday afternoon. Whether the plan will be adopted depends on the Central Election Commission's decision, Wu said.
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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