Opposition lawmakers yesterday questioned the wisdom of the Central Election Commission's (CEC) decision on Wednesday to revoke its earlier resolution and switch to a plan of separating presidential and referendum voting at polling stations.
People First Party (PFP) legislators also criticized the decision to count ballots for the presidential election that are erroneously cast into referendum ballot boxes as valid.
In a question-and-answer session during a legislative committee meeting yesterday morning, People First Party legislators Chen Chin-hsin (
"Since it's unlikely that presidential ballots would end up in the referendum ballot boxes, don't you think it makes more sense for the commission to meet again and scrap its original plan?" Feng asked.
Huang said that he would discuss their concerns with the CEC's members.
The commission had originally adopted a plan proposed by the Cabinet in which voters would pick up the presidential and referendum ballots at the same time. Local election commissions, including those of Taipei City, Miaoli County, Yunlin County and Hualien County, however, argued that this approach might cause trouble and slow down the counting process.
The CEC on Wednesday decided that presidential and referendum voting should be separated, but agreed to maintain the original resolution that miscast ballots be counted as valid.
In addition, ballots for the presidential election will be counted first, although local election commissions with ample space and sufficient manpower will be allowed to tally the presidential and referendum ballots at the same time.
Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Chien Lin Huei-jyun (
"I feel sorry about the CEC's new decision," Chien Lin said. "Nothing can be simpler than picking up the presidential and two referendum ballots at the same time and casting them into the three ballot boxes, which match the colors of the ballots."
According to Huang, the new procedure of separating the voting is estimated to cost an additional NT$84 million and would need 42,000 more people to assist in the polling process.
The Ministry of Justice has earmarked NT$29 million to crack down on vote-buying and NT$42 million for a promotional campaign to discourage the practise. The National Police Administration has also set aside NT$180 million to maintain civic safety and collect information on vote-buying.
Meanwhile, Miaoli Election Commission Chairman Ku Cheng-ching (
Ku announced his resignation on Wednesday last week out of disappointment that his proposal to separate the referendum and presidential polling stations had been ignored.
He also requested that the Control Yuan launch an investigation into the referendum controversy and repeated that he had been bullied and intimidated by people opposed to his proposal.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the