The large number of invalid ballots cast in the just-concluded presidential election could be attributed to the stringent regulations governing the way invalid ballots are identified, a Kinmen election official said Monday.
In Saturday's presidential poll, 337,297 ballots, or 2.5 percent of the total ballots cast, were counted as invalid. The unprecedented large number of invalid ballots has become one of the "suspicions" the opposition "pan-blue alliance" has raised in its moves to have the election annulled.
Among the country's 25 cities and counties, the frontline island of Kinmen registered the second-highest ratio of invalid ballots in the election, with 3.66 percent, or 1,069, invalid ballots. The highest ratio was recorded in Yunlin County, with 3.99 percent.
Lee Tseng-tsai, secretary-general of the Kinmen County Election Commission, said he believes that the high ratio mainly resulted from a revision to the President and Vice President Election and Recall Law that was passed by the Legislative Yuan last October.
According to the new provision, a vote is valid if the stamp is made in a box above the photo of the candidate. In the past, a ballot was valid if the stamp was made over the candidate's name or his or her ballot number.
Before the March 20 presidential poll, Lee said, the election commission clearly briefed all election staff on the new regulation regarding the identification of invalid ballots.
"I believe that the larger number of invalid ballots was related to this more stringent standard for valid ballots," Lee said, adding that he did not think any election worker would deliberately count a properly stamped valid ballot as invalid.
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