Weighing referendum rules
On April 11, the Cabinet approved a proposal to amend the Referendum Act (公民投票法) by adding a requirement for proposers and signatories to provide their telephone number and attach photocopies of their identity cards. The Cabinet has now submitted this proposal to the legislature, but opposition parties are against the bill and have been obstructing legislative committee meetings.
Requiring copies of IDs would be a hindrance for referendum initiators, known as “leading proposers,” when they are on the streets recruiting supporters.
However, signatures gathered for past referendums have included those of dead people. Although this is forgery, it is hard to track down the culprits and hold them accountable.
For these reasons, some people are for the proposed amendments, while others are against them.
The ID requirement would not eliminate fraud, but it would increase the risk of personal data leaks. This is the main reason that the Legislative Yuan’s Organic Laws and Statutes Committee has not endorsed the bill, saying that the right thing to do would be to get on with the task of creating an electronic signature system.
When submitting income tax payments, people can now choose from among several electronic identification methods. The system has proved convenient.
Judging from this experience, it would not be difficult to establish an electronic signature system for proposing and signing referendums. To more effectively prevent fraud, it would only need a function to check whether there is a record of a signatory having proposed or signed a referendum. That would be much more efficient and reliable than the current way of checking.
Some might say that there are concerns about data security, but is that not equally true of the current system and the proposed new one?
Taiwan should not dither about resolving technical problems or use them as an excuse for obstructing the implementation of referendums.
Lee Ji-sheng
New Taipei City
US President Donald Trump last week told reporters that he had signed about 12 letters to US trading partners, which were set to be sent out yesterday, levying unilateral tariff rates of up to 70 percent from Aug. 1. However, Trump did not say which countries the letters would be sent to, nor did he discuss the specific tariff rates, reports said. The news of the tariff letters came as Washington and Hanoi reached a trade deal earlier last week to cut tariffs on Vietnamese exports to the US to 20 percent from 46 percent, making it the first Asian country
Life as we know it will probably not come to an end in Japan this weekend, but what if it does? That is the question consuming a disaster-prone country ahead of a widely spread prediction of disaster that one comic book suggests would occur tomorrow. The Future I Saw, a manga by Ryo Tatsuki about her purported ability to see the future in dreams, was first published in 1999. It would have faded into obscurity, but for the mention of a tsunami and the cover that read “Major disaster in March 2011.” Years later, when the most powerful earthquake ever
Chinese intimidation of Taiwan has entered a chilling new phase: bolder, more multifaceted and unconstrained by diplomatic norms. For years, Taiwan has weathered economic coercion, military threats, diplomatic isolation, political interference, espionage and disinformation, but the direct targeting of elected leaders abroad signals an alarming escalation in Beijing’s campaign of hostility. Czech military intelligence recently uncovered a plot that reads like fiction, but is all too real. Chinese diplomats and civil secret service in Prague had planned to ram the motorcade of then-vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and physically assault her during her visit to the Czech Republic in March last
As things heated up in the Middle East in early June, some in the Pentagon resisted American involvement in the Israel-Iran war because it would divert American attention and resources from the real challenge: China. This was exactly wrong. Rather, bombing Iran was the best thing that could have happened for America’s Asia policy. When it came to dealing with the Iranian nuclear program, “all options are on the table” had become an American mantra over the past two decades. But the more often US administration officials insisted that military force was in the cards, the less anyone believed it. After
RSS