Opinions on absentee voting remained divided among academics and lawmakers across party lines as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ting Shou-chun (丁守中) yesterday proposed a draft bill to allow absentee voting in referendums and elections.
KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) said that since many areas in which the pan-blue camp once held dominance had become unreliable and that many students and workers were based in cities different from their registered residence, there should be no significant difference in the voter turnout for any political party.
However, the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) said that while the location of voting may not affect who the average worker or student votes for, the location of ballots for military personnel could influence them.
DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) had a different perspective on the issue, saying that compared with other democracies, the turnout rate for Taiwanese elections is very high.
However, the spirit and value of democracy does not lie in the high turnout rate, but rather in the egalitarian way in which elections are held, she said.
The implementation of absentee voting may cause people “who do not have freedom, or who are only partially free” — such as military personnel still in the barracks or prisoners — to be influenced by the government, she said.
Taiwanese businesspeople in China merit consideration, she said, adding that if such businesspeople choose to vote in Kinmen or Matsu, China may be able to monitor and influence how they vote.
The pan-green camp is united in its complete refusal to consider the possibility of overseas voting by mail, which may incur secret ballot breaches, or give rise to vote buying and interference by a third- party government, DPP caucus convener Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said.
“This is something that I believe both the KMT and the DPP are afraid of,” Ker said.
Meanwhile, academics were also divided on the issue.
National Taiwan University professor Wang Yeh-lih (王業立) said absentee voting is a proven system that has been implemented by many nations, and Taiwan has the capability to implement such as system.
However, Soochow University political science professor Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said that Taiwan does not require such a system to boost its turnout rate.
According to Wang, the main problem lies in a lack of faith between the governing and the opposition parties, adding that such distrust would only become sharper if Taiwan implemented electronic voting.
If absentee voting was concentrated in a few select areas, it may be possible that abseentee voters could be influenced, Hsu said. There is also the risk of government departments trying to mobilize their workers on the sly, he said.
For instance, if a large number of civil servants take a leave of absence from work, it may become possible for government departments to organize these absentees into voting for a certain political party via absentee voting systems, Hsu said.
If it is simply a measure to boost the voter turnout rate, extending the voting period would be sufficient, Hsu said.
The one situation most suitable for absentee voting is a referendum, because referendums are topic-driven and do not result in a political victory for a certain party, Hsu said.
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