While mulling implementation of absentee voting in the 2012 presidential election, the Central Election Commission (CEC) yesterday reaffirmed that citizens living overseas will not be given the right to vote by absentee ballots because of concern that China might try to influence elections results.
“There are millions of Taiwanese businesspeople working in the PRC [People’s Republic of China], and absentee voting might be manipulated by the PRC,” Central Election Commission Vice Chairman Liu I-chou (劉義周) told an international seminar in Taipei organized by the CEC and the Association of Asian Election Authorities.
“Besides, I think the public is not ready for overseas voting yet,” he added. “The public favors a system that delivers a quick answer, and they are reluctant to accept a system that is not transparent.”
Indonesian General Elections Commissioner Syamsul Bahri said that Indonesia encountered some problems when implementing overseas voting.
“As stated in the Indonesian General Election Law, the election day inside or outside the country have to be [on] the same day. It means that overseas citizen[s] probably have to vote during the business day,” he said. “In fact, they often choose to work rather than going to Indonesian [consular] premises to give a vote.”
As a result of problems such as the one that Indonesia has, International Foundation for Electoral Systems in the Philippines chief of party Beverly Hagerdon Thakur said the cost of conducting overseas voting and the turnout could be of a concern for election authorities, although she supports external voting in general.
Indian Deputy Election Commissioner Alok Shukla said that in India, absentee voting — whether in person or through mail-in ballots — only applies to certain -categories of voters, such as soldiers, police officers and -government employees or displaced citizens, who cannot make it to their designated poll stations on the election day.
Japan, on the other hand, has a more flexible approach to absentee voting.
Those who cannot make it to polling stations on election day may take part in early voting by mailing in their ballots prior to the election, voting in designated poll stations in cities other than their hometowns, Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Election Affairs Deputy Director Hara Masanobu said.
“In modern political systems, the people of a country voice their opinions through elections, which in turn help realize the idea of popular sovereignty. As democracies seek to expand and protect the right to vote, they often recognize the need to put in place an absentee voting mechanism to protect this right,” Central Election Commission and Association of Asian Election Authorities chairwoman Chang Po-ya (張博雅) told the seminar in English.
“When a country reforms its electoral system, it must take into account its historical, social and cultural context,” Chang added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching