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Pan-green city councilors cry foul over election ads

Pan-green Taipei City councilors yesterday blasted the Taipei Election Commission for failing to include information about the referendums in advertisements for the legislative election next Saturday.

The councilors said that all posters, pamphlets or banners sent to municipal district offices by the commission to promote the legislative election only contained information that each voter would receive two ballots -- one for the legislative candidates and the other for the political party -- at the polling stations, and failed to inform voters about the two referendum ballots.

"The commission is clearly trying to boycott the referendum ballots with such selective messaging," Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Lee Ching-feng (李慶鋒) told a press conference at Taipei City Council yesterday.

Independent Taipei City Councilor Chien Yu-yen (簡余晏) slammed Taipei Election Commission director Jason Yeh (葉傑生), who also serves as deputy commissioner of Taipei City's Civil Affairs Department, for following the city government and intentionally leaving out information about the two referendum ballots in the ads.

Under the one-step voting procedure announced by the Central Election Commission, voters will receive two ballots for the legislative elections and two referendum ballots upon entering the polling station and then cast them into four different boxes.

However, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has launched a campaign to boycott the referendums, urging voters not to cast their referendum ballots.

Chien said Yeh had already violated the Referendum Act (公民投票法), which states that local election commissions should take responsibility for the announcement and promotion of referendum ballots, and threatened to send him to the Civil Servant Disciplinary Committee if he failed to make changes to the ads.

In response, Yeh said the commission had not violated any regulation as the ads did not ask voters to boycott the referendums. He added that the commission was willing to revise the ads.
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