Election fraud expert Wang Kun-sheng (王坤盛) on Wednesday revealed a new tactic he says pan-blue camp candidates have recently set in motion to prevent supporters of rival political parties from casting their votes on election day.
In the scheme, which Wang said has been employed in Changhua County and other central regions, voters’ national identification cards are “rented” and are to be withheld until the day after the Jan. 16 presidential and legislative elections.
According to Wang, the candidates are paying NT$10,000 to rent a resident’s identification card, which is required to verify voters’ identities at polling stations — effectively keeping them from casting their ballots.
Wang said that pan-blue camp candidates have, through intermediaries, been arranging for the rental of identification cards belonging to known supporters of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
“Some people might give in to this, because NT$10,000 is quite an enticing amount,” Wang said.
Following Wang’s allegations, Changhua County Commissioner Wei Ming-ku (魏明谷) of the DPP on Wednesday met with the Changhua District Prosecutors’ Office and a local district court.
Wei requested prosecutors and judges to bolster their efforts to investigate allegations of vote-buying and other illegal electoral tactics to ensure fair elections.
Acknowledging that such illicit tactics were rife in Changhua in past elections, Wei said: “People have been known to accept money for their votes, persuaded by family or friends, and think that they can get away with it. We urge everyone to say ‘No’ to vote-buying, because that is the only way to stop bribes from influencing election outcomes.”
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
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