Voting yesterday went smoothly at most polling stations, where only a few minor violations were reported nationwide, most of them involving the tearing up of ballots.
The National Police Agency said the reported violations of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) included making noise or interfering with public order at polling stations, bringing cellphones or videocameras into voting booths, tearing up ballots and voters trying to leave a polling station with ballots.
There were also some cases of polling station staff stopping people who were wearing campaign vests.
Photo: Lin Hsin-han, Taipei Times
A man in Taipei was cited for trying to collect his daughter’s ballots, while a 22-year-old university student in Pingtung was cited for tearing up his ballots because he could not decide who to vote for.
In Greater Taichung, a 28-year-old man cast his ballot for the mayoral election, but tore up the city councilor and borough warden ballots. He was reported to police after he asked the polling station staff where he could throw the ballot pieces away.
In Nantou County, a retired teacher was reported in Puli Township (埔里) for taking photographs of his five ballots inside a voting booth after he sound of the camera’s shutter attracted the attention of the manager of the polling station. The man said he thought the largest elections in Taiwan’s history should be recorded.
Photo: Ou Su-mei, Taipei Times
Some candidates in Taipei and New Taipei City were cited because their campaign ads continued to air on Bee TV on public buses. They could face fines of between NT$500,000 and NT$5 million (US$16,000 and US$161,000).
By law, no campaign activities or broadcasts could occur after midnight on Friday.
Meanwhile, couples in Miaoli County and Keelung did not let their weddings stop them from voting. The Miaoli couple held their wedding banquet at noon so they would still have time to get to their polling stations.
Photo: Tung Chen-kuo, Taipei Times
In Greater Tainan, 100-year-old Wu Cheng (吳城) rode a bicycle to his polling station. He was just one of many centenarians who voted nationwide.
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:
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