The Executive Yuan has agreed to increase incentives to polling booth monitors and volunteers for the local elections on Nov. 24, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said yesterday.
The incentives — two compensatory days off instead of one and a higher pay — should facilitate the commission’s efforts to enlist volunteers, it said, amid rising concern that the commission and voting station staff would be overwhelmed by the increased workload with the addition of 10 referendum questions to the nine-in-one elections.
The commission is reaching out to universities to recruit students as volunteers, with CEC Chairman Chen In-chin (陳英鈐) encouraging students to participate in the civic process.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
The only requirement to qualify as a volunteer is that they be a Republic of China citizen, Chen said.
Asked whether having student volunteers would lower student participation in the vote, Chen said volunteers have the option of voting at their registered residences or the voting station where they have been assigned.
The Legislative Yuan last year approved amendments to the Referendum Act (公民投票法) lowering the legal voting age for referendums to 18.
Recruitment results will be announced on a weekly basis, Chen said, adding that the commission’s target is to have civil servants and teachers make up half of the polling booth workers with the half being drawn from the general public.
There are to be four ballot boxes: for the nine-in-one election ballot; for referendum numbers 7 to 9; for referendum numbers 10 to 12; and for referendum numbers 13 to 16.
To date, the nation has held six referendums, the first and second held in conjunction with the 2004 presidential election, and the other four during the 2008 presidential election.
The commission said it hopes to conclude all ballot counting before midnight of voting day.
The commission also released a list of the 10 referendums that are to be included in this year’s vote: three by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — two on air pollution and one on banning food products from Fukushima Prefecture; three by the Happiness of the Next Generation Alliance against same-sex marriage and education; two by LGBT support groups on supporting same-sex marriage and education; one on having Taiwan participate in the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games under the name of Taiwan and not Chinese Taipei; and one on scrapping the “2025 nuclear-free homeland” target.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
TRANSPORT DISRUPTION: More than 100 ferry services were suspended due to rough seas and strong winds, and eight domestic flights were canceled, the ministry said Tropical Storm Wipha intensified slightly yesterday as it passed closest to Taiwan, dumping more than 200mm of rain in Hualien and Taitung counties, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 11am, Wipha was about 210km southwest of Cape Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and was moving west-northwest at 27km per hour (kph). The storm carried maximum sustained winds of 101kph and gusts reaching 126kph, with a 150km radius of strong winds, CWA data showed. Wipha’s outer rainbands began sweeping across Taiwan early yesterday, delivering steady rainfall in the east and scattered showers in other regions, forecasters said. More heavy rain was expected, especially in the eastern