Voters in Taiwan could be able to cast their votes away from their registered home addresses as early as the year-end local elections, Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) told a press conference yesterday.
Currently, voters can only turn in ballots at designated polling stations near their registered home addresses, leaving many unable to vote because they live in another city or abroad.
“Pushing for absentee voting will be one of our priority policies this year,” Jiang said.
Although the Ministry of the Interior’s objective in the long run is to allow voters to mail in their ballots, it would start by allowing voters living away from their registered address to cast votes near their actual residence.
“We plan to allow voters not living at their registered addresses to register to vote in the city or town where they live. We would mail the voting slip to their actual residence and they could cast their votes at designated balloting stations nearby,” Department of Civil Affairs Director Huang Li-hsin (黃麗馨) said.
Jiang said the ministry originally planned to implement the new voting scheme during the 2012 presidential election, “but we now hope to put it into practice during a smaller-scale election, such as the year-end local elections. That would help troubleshoot the system and the impact of any problems wouldn’t be as big.”
However, the minister said, there were still many obstacles.
“For example, we have to draft new laws and revisions to the Election and Recall Act of Public Servants [公職人員選舉罷免法] and complete the legislative process months before the December elections,” Jiang said. “We will try to finish drafting revisions by the end of next month and submit them to the legislature.”
Meanwhile, since voting would only be held in Taipei, Sinbei City (currently Taipei County), and the newly merged Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung municipalities, it would cost too much to set up polling stations for voters from these five areas living outside of the areas, Jiang said.
“Mail-in ballots are too complicated to implement now, but it’s our long-term objective,” he said.
Democratic Progressive Party spokesman Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) said a change in the voting system was a big step and urged the ministry to offer a detailed plan.
He asked how the government would define voters not living at their registered address and whether people in China, a country with limited freedoms, would be capable of voting.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY RICH CHANG
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