People First Party (PFP) Chairman and presidential candidate James Soong (宋楚瑜) will not get his deposit of NT$15 million (US$500,000) back because he failed to garner enough votes in Saturday’s presidential election, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said yesterday.
Soong’s ticket won just 369,588 votes, or 2.77 percent of the votes cast, CEC Secretary-General Teng Tien-you (鄧天佑) said.
The minimum required for a refund is 5 percent.
“He will not be eligible to receive any campaign subsidies and his deposit will be forfeit,” Teng said.
He also said the CEC would convene a meeting on Thursday to review the list of elected legislators, as well as the president and vice president, and publish the subsidies for the elected candidates and their parties.
According to the President and Vice President Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法), if a ticket garners more than 33 percent of the votes needed to win, the CEC will provide a subsidy of NT$30 per vote.
Based on this, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) ticket should get a subsidy of about NT$206.73 million, while his main rival, Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), should get NT$182.8 million.
Ma and Tsai will also have their deposits of NT$15 million back.
If a political party garners more than 5 percent of the votes cast in legislative elections, it will receive a subsidy of NT$50 per vote, according to the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選罷法).
The 34 legislator-at-large seats in the 113-seat legislature are awarded according to the number of votes each party receives in the political party balloting. Because the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) garnered 5.86 million votes, it will be eligible to receive a subsidy of more than NT$290 million. The DPP will receive a subsidy of NT$230 million, while the PFP will get NT$36 million and the Taiwan Solidarity Union will receive NT$59 million.
For regional and Aboriginal legislators, candidates who get at least 33 percent of the votes needed to win in their constituencies will receive subsidies of NT$30 per vote.
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