The National Students’ Union of Taiwan (NSUT) yesterday launched an online mock election for students ahead of the Jan. 11 presidential and legislative elections.
The mock election was co-organized by groups including the Taiwan Youth Association for Democracy and the Taiwan Alliance for Advancement of Youth Rights and Welfare, as well as 35 university student unions, said the union, which was founded in April.
Online voting was scheduled to open to holders of student identification cards from senior-high schools, vocational high schools and universities at 8:20pm last night, it said.
Photo courtesy of the National Students’ Union of Taiwan
Students would be able to vote for a presidential candidate and a political party through a messenger chatbot linked to the union’s and the alliance’s Facebook pages, it added.
Online voting is to close at 8:20pm on Sunday, and the results are to be announced at 10am on Monday, it said.
Earlier this month, organizers sent out multiple-choice questionnaires to all presidential and legislative candidates, as well as political parties, union president Tan Ko-him (陳佑維) said.
The survey asked their stance on 10 topics, including a proposal to lower the minimum voting age to 18, marriage equality and labor policy, he said, adding that responses would be posted online.
Students without voting rights or who cannot return to the places where they are registered to vote make up less than 30 percent of Taiwan’s voting age population, Tan said.
However, they are to bear “100 percent of the future fate of Taiwan,” he added.
Historically, the turnout among young voters has always been relatively low, association secretary-general Alvin Chang (張育萌) said.
Statistics show that the voter turnout among 20-to-35-year-olds in the elections held between 2008 and 2016 was about 50 to 60 percent, while turnout among voters aged 65 and older is about 80 to 90 percent, he said.
Chang cited a higher overlap between the legal and actual residences of middle-aged and older voters as a reason for their higher turnout.
Taiwan’s electoral system is “unfair to young people,” he said, adding that many young voters are unable to travel back to their hometowns during elections because of financial constraints.
About 1.18 million people would be able to vote for the first time next month, he said, citing Central Election Commission data.
“Can 1.18 million voters sway the results of an election? I believe we all have an answer in our hearts,” he added.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods