A survey released yesterday by a polling firm found that a push to lower the voting age from 20 to 18 does not enjoy majority support among the public, echoing findings recently cited by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
The poll by Taiwan Indicators Survey Research contained questions to gauge how the push to lower the voting age — highlighted during the student-led Sunflower movement — was perceived by the public.
The survey first asked respondents whether they supported or opposed reducing the voting age to 18.
The result showed that 17.4 percent said they strongly supported the idea and 21 percent were leaning toward supporting it.
Of the remaining respondents, 30.2 percent said they strongly opposed the idea, 21.9 percent were leaning toward opposing it and 9.5 percent did not give their views.
Respondents were asked the same question again after they were told by pollsters that young people over 18 can get a driver’s license, take national civil service exams, apply for early enlistment in the military and cast a ballot in a political party primary.
They were also told that 18-year-olds hold full adult criminal responsibility, despite the Civil Code stipulating that adulthood begins at age 20.
Support increased to 40.2 percent of the respondents, while 48.2 percent remained opposed and 11.6 percent did not answer.
While 18-year-olds have voting rights in more than 90 percent of democratic nations in the world,
Taiwan lacks a consensus on the issue — which would require a constitutional amendment, as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has proposed — the research firm said.
Earlier this week, the DPP vowed to push for a constitutional amendment to lower the voting age in response to the appeal made by student groups and activists following the Sunflower movement, but the Ma administration has rejected any constitutional reform and urged the DPP to prioritize the nation’s economic needs.
The government had said that a survey by the National Development Committee late last month and a recent poll by the KMT’s research center both found that more than 55 percent of the public were opposed to lowering the voting age.
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