MOI's draft amendment to Referendum Law aired

The Ministry of the Interior yesterday released its draft revisions to the Referendum Law (公投法), which is expected to be submitted to the Executive Yuan this week for review and to reach the Legislative Yuan by the middle of next month.

One big change in the draft amendment is the replacement of the Referendum Supervisory Commission with the Central Election Committee.

"The main revisions include the omission of a referendum supervisory committee, which would be replaced by the Central Election Commission, and the addition of district referendums and the loosening of minimum requirements for holding a referendum," said Vice Minister of the Interior Lee Chin-yung (李進勇) yesterday.

The amendment stipulates that the commission would be responsible for handling all referendum matters.

Lee said that public hearings would still be held before a referendum take place.

The addition of the mechanism of district referendums would allow county and or city election committees to be responsible for district referendums.

Topics such as whether to build a nuclear power plant, or to construct a dam are examples of a district referendum, a ministry official said.

The ministry's draft amendment would also lower the minimum requiremement for voter participation for a referendum to be considered successful as well as the number of people it would take to initiate a referendum.

The number of individuals required to initiate a referendum would be lowered to .1 percent of the electorate, or about 16,000 individuals, from the original .5 percent, or about 80,000 people.

The threshold for the number of signatures needed for a successful referendum petition would be lowered to 2 percent of the electorate (about 320,000 signatures) from the current 5 percent (about 800,000 signatures).

These percentage figures, Lee said, have been based on the regulation that requires a voting turnout of at least 20 percent for a mayoral or county commissioner election to be valid.

In order to determine the passing of a referendum, the revision draft stipulates, 30 percent of "yes" votes are needed out of all the ballots cast, given that "yes" votes are more than "no" votes. However, for topics related to the Constitution, the approval rate needs to be at least 50 percent of all voters taking part in the referendum.

Another revision was the proposal to remove the Legislative Yuan's right to initiate and to second a referendum proposal, as this authority of the legislature is already clearly stipulated in the Constitution.

The ministry said that the decision to remove this regulation was made in order not to overlap constitutional execution with the authority of the legislature.