In the nine-in-one elections last year, civic groups protested the Central Election Commission’s (CEC) decision to ban members of the public from taking photographs and making video recordings in the audience area at ballot-box tallying stations during vote counting.
On Wednesday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), during a question-and-answer session at the Legislative Yuan, asked CEC Chairman Liu Yi-chou (劉義周) whether the commission planned to reconsider the ban.
Liu said the commission planned to meet this month to discuss a resolution passed by the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee, which requests that the CEC revoke the ban, and added that he would lobby in favor of the resolution.
The commission’s reluctance to take action is not surprising. Although civic groups have repeatedly urged the agency to reform a variety of election-related regulations before every election, the issues have remained unresolved.
Examples of such matters include the calls to lower the voting age from 20 to 18 and the discussions over whether to implement absentee voting.
Such issues end up being treated by political parties as bargaining chips for constitutional amendments; and as a result, nothing gets done to genuinely address them.
The ballot-counting process must be open and transparent. This is the guiding principle that election agencies in all nations must follow.
For example, in Mongolia, to address the strong suspicions over the transparency of the ballot-counting process, the government in 2012 began broadcasting the entire process to people waiting outside voting stations. The number of disputes caused by the process has been greatly reduced ever since.
The commission fears that allowing people to videotape the ballot-counting process inside voting stations might violate electoral neutrality.
It has also come up with several other excuses, such as allowing members of the public to take photographs and record videos would put too much pressure on election officials, or the practice being prohibitively expensive.
It is understood that given the ubiquity of digital technology — most people have cameras on their mobile phones — it is virtually impossible to stop people from taking pictures or making video recordings of the ballot-counting process.
This shows that Chen was right when he said at the Legislative Yuan that, “the [CEC] should not remain in the Stone Age, it must make politics more open and more transparent.”
Chen Chien-fu is convener of Citizen’s Congress Watch’s interactive video-on-demand team.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of
RSS