Miscast election ballots will be counted, CEC announces

Ballots the presidential election that end up in referendum ballot boxes will be counted and considered as valid, given that the ballot itself is a valid one. Furthermore, a voter's identification card will only be stamped once for voting for both the presidential election and the referendum, the Central Election Commission (CEC) announced yesterday.

"The commission has decided that misplaced ballots will be considered valid, although the act of misplacing the ballot is considered a violation of the President and Vice-President Election and Recall Law," said CEC Chairman Huang Shih-Cheng (黃石城).

According to Article 60 of the Election Law, invalid ballots are those that have not been marked or of which the paper has been torn.

Huang that voters who try to place an election ballot into the referendum ballot box will be stopped by voting center personnel and be handed over to the police if they refuse to place the ballot into the right box.

"Although it might seem contradictory that the act of miscasting the ballot is illegal while the ballot itself may still be considered valid, the commission feels that this is how the matter should be handled," Huang said.

A voter in violation of the elelection law could receive a maximum prison sentence of five years.

According to Huang, ballots in the presidential ballot box will be counted before those in referendum boxes. Valid presidential ballots found in the referendum box will be counted afterwards.

"That means that there will be two stages to the announcement of the number of presidential ballots. First is the total number of valid presidential ballots found in presidential ballot boxes, followed by the presidential ballots found in the referendum boxes," he said.