A referendum held in conjunction with local government elections on Saturday proposed lowering the voting age from 20 to 18. However, Central Election Commission (CEC) data showed that votes fell short of the threshold — almost 9.62 million “yes” votes needed to pass — as only 5.65 million voters backed the proposed constitutional amendment, while 5.02 million voters opposed it.
Prior to the results, the Taiwan Alliance for Advancement of Youth Rights and Welfare, the Taiwan Youth Association for Democracy and other civil groups had argued that if people face obligations such as paying taxes and compulsory military service at 18 years old, they should also be given the right to vote.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) found the referendum result regrettable. The DPP said its candidates had seized every opportunity to urge supporters to back the proposed amendment in public events over the past few months, while the KMT said it respects the decision of voters and that its support for lowering the voting age remains unchanged.
There are several reasons for the referendum’s failure. The first is the relatively low voter turnout and the high threshold for the proposal’s passage. The average voter turnout rate across cities has been about 66 percent, yet it fell to a new low of 61.22 percent this year. Reaching the threshold of 9.62 million votes is incredibly ambitious. In Taiwan, presidential elections tend to have the highest turnout rate. Even President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who won a landslide victory with a record-breaking 8.17 million votes in 2018, would have fallen short of the goal by 1.49 million votes. This showcases the challenge of amending the Constitution.
Second, political parties did not exert enough effort in promoting the referendum. As the Executive Yuan and the CEC announced the referendum in September, political parties across the spectrum were not given much time to talk to the public about it. In contrast with their efforts to promote last year’s four referendum questions, there was no comprehensive approach to introduce the issue this year. With the parties concentrating on the mayoral campaigns, addressing scandals and even mudslinging, the referendum was marginalized. The straightforward nature of the question also failed to generate debate in society, which led to public indifference.
Third, ideology influenced the outcome. The result shows that Taiwan is essentially a conservative society. Having not yet broken free of the shackles of the former KMT government’s autocratic rule, the obsolete ideas of deference and obedience to authority still loom in some people’s minds. With one side believing that 18-year-olds are still too young to vote, not to mention run for office, and the other side having faith in the judgement of young people, there was a clash of ideology. Furthermore, as some voters believe that young people tend to favor the DPP, their disapproval of the ruling party might have made them cast “no” votes.
Taiwan is one of the very few democratic countries to have maintained a voting age of 20, while neighboring countries, such as South Korea and Japan, have in recent years lowered the voting age to 18. Taiwan must jump on the bandwagon. It needs to let go of its “age bias” and invite young people to engage in politics. Young people’s voices are fundamental to the development and consolidation of Taiwan’s democracy.
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS