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Voting fraud claims still unproven: DPP

With the High Court expected to deliver its verdict on the legitimacy of the March 20 presidential election next Thursday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Secretary-General Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) said yesterday that the judges have to date not been able to substantiate the pan-blue camp's claims of major flaws and fraud in the voting process.

Chang said the DPP was confident of a favorable verdict.

"So far all the accusations brought by the pan-blue camp's attorneys against the legitimacy of the presidential election have been proven to be false," Chang told a news conference yesterday afternoon.

Chang said that the number of "controversial ballots" claimed by the pan-blue camp's attorneys was sharply reduced from about 900,000 to about 300,000 after a recount was implemented. He added that no major flaws or any indication of fraud had been found.

It is unavoidable that some faults would creep in during the casting and counting of ballots due to human error, "but for the opposition parties to say those imperfections are proof of cheating is going too far," Chang said.

One of the accusations singled out by the pan-blue camp's attorneys was that the election workers in Taichung County were suspected of fabricating ballots by using the ballot papers of voters who did not show up at polling stations.

Chang said that the workers who had been subpoenaed by the prosecutors, including representatives from village administrations, school teachers, school nurses and even controllers sent by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), have all denied the claim, saying they neither participated in nor witnessed such actions.

DPP Information and Culture Department Director Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) said that the litigation strategy employed by the pan-blue camp's lawyers was to raise many groundless accusations outside the court, although they failed to provide evidence to support those accusations.

Many of the claims were proved to be no more than rumors, Cheng said, adding that the pan-blue camp's claims of election trickery were exactly the same as its accusations that the March 19 assassination attempt on President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) had been staged.

"The DPP has no qualms about the whole process of polling and counting ballots. We are confident of our legal systems and believe the verdict will be favorable to the DPP and could return justice to all the election workers," Chang said.
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