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Legislative elections and referendums: CEC urges voters not to break the law

Workers rehearse computerized ballot counting at the Central Election Commission's vote-counting center at the Taiwan Police College in Taipei yesterday. PHOTO: LIAO CHEN-HUI, TAIPEI TIMES

Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairman Chang Cheng-hsiung (張政雄) urged the public to avoid any activity that may be in violation of the Public Officials Election and Recall Law (公職人員選舉罷免法) today, following an inspection of a ballot-counting rehearsal at the central vote-counting center in Taipei yesterday.

More than 1,600 staff in 369 local vote-counting centers nationwide participated in the rehearsal yesterday to test the computer and communication systems, Chang said.

Each of the 14,377 polling stations across the country will send its election and referendum results to one of the 369 local vote-counting centers. After confirming the results, the figures will then be submitted to the central vote-counting center, Chang said.

"Although the election ballots will be counted first, no results will be announced until after the referendum ballots have been cleared since election ballots miscast into referendum boxes will also be considered valid," Chang told a news conference yesterday. "All voters should be reminded that no equipment with the capacity to take photgraphs and no mobile phones will be allowed into polling stations. Such equipment may be left in the boxes or baskets provided by election authorities outside the stations."

Violations are punishable by a fine of between NT$30,000 (US$924) and NT$300,000.

In addition, any campaigning or canvassing activities are prohibited after midnight last night.

"There should be no campaigning by any candidate, no campaign ads on television and no attempt to convince others to vote for a certain candidate at all tomorrow [today]," Chang said. "No one is allowed to wear anything with a candidate's or a political party's campaign logo or slogan into polling stations either."

Violators may be punished by a fine of between NT$500,000 and NT$5 million.

To be eligible to vote in today's legislative election and for the referendums, voters need to take their ID card, personal seal and their voting notice to the designated polling stations between 8am and 4pm.

The official election and referendum results are likely to be announced by 10:30pm, Chang said.

The CEC said there are around 17.29 million people eligible to vote in today's election and referendums. 17,179,658 are eligible to vote for regional and aboriginal lawmakers and 17,288,551 are eligible to vote for the at-large legislators and the two referendums.

The numbers differ because the conditions for casting votes are different under the Public Officials Election and Recall Law and the Referendum Law (公民投票法), CEC officials said.

Voters who cast ballots for regional and aboriginal lawmakers have to have held their household registration in that area for at least six months, while those who cast votes in the referendums must have four months of residency, while voting for at-large seats has no limitation based on residency.

CEC officials refused to speculate on the likely turnout for the election. The turnout rates for the last two legislative elections were 66.2 percent in 2001 and 59.2 percent in 2004.

Meanwhile, the CEC said the two referendums to be held alongside the legislative election today will clear the first hurdle if approximately 8.64 million people turn out to vote.

The Referendum Act states that a referendum shall be considered passed if half of the total number of voters -- 17,277,720 -- cast referendum ballots and at least half of the valid ballots agree with the initiative.

This means the two referendums -- one initiated by the Democratic Progressive Party to retrieve what it claims are assets stolen by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) during its five decades of rule, and one initiated by the KMT to empower the legislature to investigate the misconduct of senior government officials and their families -- will require at least 8,638,861 people to cast ballots, with around 4.3 million voting "yes" in each case.
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