The Central Election Commission (CEC) on Tuesday advanced four referendum proposals into the signature-gathering second phase for a total of 19 and established procedures for conducting the nine-in-one elections and the referendums in tandem on Nov. 24.
After deliberations, the commission decided that the referendums and the elections would be held at the same polling stations, that a separate ballot would be used for each referendum, that ballots for the elections would be distributed first and that the vote count for the elections first would be conducted.
Voters can choose to receive all of the referendum ballots or only the ones they want, in the same way ballots for elections are distributed, commission Chairman Chen In-chin (陳英鈐) said.
The commission expects to open about 15,000 polling stations and assign 200,000 poll workers, he said.
Among the four proposals approved on Tuesday was a referendum sponsored by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers on curbing the use of coal-fired power plants and two referendums by Social Democratic Party member Miao Po-ya (苗博雅) on high-school gender equality education and the legalization of same-sex marriage.
The commission had earlier approved 14 referendum proposals, including one by former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on barring officials and politicians from meddling in the judiciary and several measures against the legalization of same-sex marriage by the Alliance for the Happiness of Future Generations.
While the commission has cleared the 19 proposals to enter the second phase, not all of them will have enough time to gather the required signatures to become referendums, Chen said, adding that the commission has to evaluate proposals in the order that they were filed.
The commission expects to know how many referendums would be voted on by late next month or early September, Chen said, adding that it would assign up to three additional workers per polling station depending on the workload on election day.
The central vote-counting center for the elections is to be at Taiwan Police College in Taipei, as it is during presidential elections, he said.
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