Premier William Lai (賴清德) yesterday ordered the Central Election Commission (CEC) to explore the possibility of conducting electronic referendums and to propose methods to correct the flaws seen in the nine-in-one elections within a month.
There has been public outrage over the way the elections and 10 referendums were conducted on Saturday last week, which was attributable to the commission’s poor planning and inflexibility, which greatly inconvenienced voters, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka quoted Lai as saying at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting.
Even though Chen In-chin (陳英鈐) resigned as CEC chairman on Sunday, the commission must learn its lesson, overhaul the electoral process and propose amendments to election rules, since holding referendums alongside elections is likely to become the norm, Lai was quoted as saying.
He told the commission to explore the possibility of holding electronic referendums to avoid a repeat of Saturday’s chaos, when some people were still voting even as polling stations began vote-counting.
However, due to the technicalities involved, the government has not set a timetable for the changes to be adopted in time for the next elections, as the scheme should be carefully assessed to ensure fairness, Lai said.
The commission should also propose ways to ensure fairness in the initiation process for a referendum and prevent signatures of deceased people from being submitted, he said.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) allegedly used the tactic when it submitted petitions for its referendum proposals on reducing the use of coal power.
The Executive Yuan fully respects the outcome of the referendums and would engage in extensive discussions with all legislative caucuses in formulating policies to act on their outcomes, the premier said.
CEC Deputy Minister Chen Chao-chien (陳朝建) said that “the Referendum Act (公民投票法) needs to be amended if referendums are to be conducted electronically,” as regulations only allow electronic petitions to be submitted for referendums.
The CEC has commissioned construction of an electronic system for the initiation stage of referendums, with system testing expected to commence soon, Chen said.
Lai also told the Ministry of Education and the Mainland Affairs Council to help Taichung mayor-elect Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕), who pledged to secure Taichung’s right to host the first East Asian Youth Games next year.
The premier praised the campaign pledges made by incoming mayors and county commissioners to push for more visits by Chinese tour groups, and ordered the Tourism Bureau and the council to assist in the effort.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching