More than 19 million people are expected to head to voting booths today to cast their ballots in the nine-in-one elections and 10 referendums.
Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairman Chen In-chin (陳英鈐) yesterday encouraged people to vote, reminding them to take their national identification card, stamp and voting notification billet with them.
Voters should use provided stamps to stamp the ballots, and not their personal stamps, for their votes to be valid, he added.
Photo: CNA
There are 19,102,502 eligible voters for the county commissioner and city mayor elections, and 19,053,128 eligible voters for the city and county councilor elections, the commission said.
There are 19,757,067 eligible voters for the referendums. Of those, 580,000 voters are 18 to 20 years old, it said.
Under the Referendum Act (公民投票法), “yes” votes must exceed one-quarter of the total amount of eligible voters, or 4,939,267 votes, and must be more than the number of “no” votes for a referendum to be passed, the commission said.
Photo: Chen Yu-fu, Taipei Times
Today’s election is on par with the scale of the last presidential election, with 15,886 voting booths across the nation and 290,000 staffers and volunteers at voting stations, Chen said.
No propaganda would be allowed at voting stations, and under the principle of election neutrality, no consultation about referendums would be provided at the voting stations, Chen said.
Voters can take personal notes about referendums into the voting booths, but they must not be displayed publicly, should not be left in the voting station and should not be put into the ballot boxes, Chen said, adding that people who contravene these rules could face a fine of NT$5,000.
Cellphones and other photography equipment are not allowed in voting stations, with transgressors facing fines of NT$30,000 to NT$300,000, Chen said, adding that those who destroy ballots could be fined NT$5,000 to NT$50,000.
Voters cannot wear clothing or carry any stickers or other items with text, symbols or images that are related to referendum questions at the polling stations, CEC spokesperson Chen Chao-chien (陳朝建) said.
The commission said it estimated that all city mayor, county commissioner, and city and county councilor ballots would be counted before 9pm, with the results being validated before 11pm.
It would finish counting all referendum ballots before midnight, meaning that referendum results could be made known as early as 2am tomorrow, the commission said.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
RSS