Since the presidential and legislative elections on Jan. 13, absentee voting has once again become part of national discourse. Stories of Taiwanese returning from far-flung places across the globe are heartwarming ahead of elections, but always initiate pause for recourse in the weeks that follow.
Why should a citizen living abroad have to dig into their savings to exercise their democratic right? Why should a person working in Taipei have to fight the crowd to return to a hometown they never visit? Even more galling, why do politicians continue to allow thousands of military service members and prisoners to be de facto disenfranchised?
Proponents of absentee voting rightly point to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights for moral grounding. Surely democracies have a duty to ensure the rights of their citizens. Many other mature democracies allow absentee voting of some kind, whether by mail, representative office, drop box, proxies or, less commonly, online. Although these systems are theoretically more susceptible to fraud, very little evidence of anything more than individual anomalies have been found.
Countries use a variety of security measures, such as an individualized serial number printed on each voter’s ballot like in the US. Taiwan has a wealth of experience to draw from, and plenty of bureaucratic might to pull it off.
Then again, Taiwan is not like other democracies.
When faced with a perennial adversary looking for any opportunity to interfere in its elections, the government must balance its obligation to uphold citizen rights and its duty to ensure trustworthy elections. Even with security measures, Beijing would be dedicated to finding loopholes. Taiwanese voters must wade through a plethora of meddling from across the Strait, as the latest elections made sparklingly clear. It is miraculous that Taiwan maintains credible elections, even with relentless disinformation, propaganda junket trips and vote buying.
As opponents of absentee voting say: Why fix what is not broken?
The question is a thorny one, which explains the decades-long hemming and hawing. Politicians have been calling for some form of absentee voting even before the first direct presidential election was held in 1996. The opposition party usually takes up the cause, only to hedge it again when they get in office. The cycle has started again, with new Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators last month vowing to push the issue in the name of democracy and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators reiterating the causes for concern.
Yet there might be a glimmer of hope on the horizon, again. The DPP on Thursday last week approved a bill that would allow absentee voting — but only in referendums. It also rules out voting by mail, seeking instead to only allow in-person voting from districts outside a voter’s registered residence, for which they must apply at least 60 days in advance.
The bill made rounds once in 2020, but failed to clear the legislature in time. Now, the Cabinet has proposed it again, hopefully before a more receptive audience: opposition lawmakers who only weeks before vowed to rectify this very issue.
The bill is not a remedy to Taiwan’s enfranchisement problem, but it is a start. Absentee voting only in referendums is just an attempt to run a “low stakes” trial of a solution that already has low stakes. Allowing in-person voting from different districts within Taiwan comes with little risk and great reward, making it a political no-brainer.
The greatest concern regarding absentee voting would be voting from abroad. Hopefully, the legislature could soon clear this hurdle so that it could focus on the next one, as voters are waiting.
A series of strong earthquakes in Hualien County not only caused severe damage in Taiwan, but also revealed that China’s power has permeated everywhere. A Taiwanese woman posted on the Internet that she found clips of the earthquake — which were recorded by the security camera in her home — on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. It is spine-chilling that the problem might be because the security camera was manufactured in China. China has widely collected information, infringed upon public privacy and raised information security threats through various social media platforms, as well as telecommunication and security equipment. Several former TikTok employees revealed
The bird flu outbreak at US dairy farms keeps finding alarming new ways to surprise scientists. Last week, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed that H5N1 is spreading not just from birds to herds, but among cows. Meanwhile, media reports say that an unknown number of cows are asymptomatic. Although the risk to humans is still low, it is clear that far more work needs to be done to get a handle on the reach of the virus and how it is being transmitted. That would require the USDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to get
For the incoming Administration of President-elect William Lai (賴清德), successfully deterring a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attack or invasion of democratic Taiwan over his four-year term would be a clear victory. But it could also be a curse, because during those four years the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will grow far stronger. As such, increased vigilance in Washington and Taipei will be needed to ensure that already multiplying CCP threat trends don’t overwhelm Taiwan, the United States, and their democratic allies. One CCP attempt to overwhelm was announced on April 19, 2024, namely that the PLA had erred in combining major missions
On April 11, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida delivered a speech at a joint meeting of the US Congress in Washington, in which he said that “China’s current external stance and military actions present an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge … to the peace and stability of the international community.” Kishida emphasized Japan’s role as “the US’ closest ally.” “The international order that the US worked for generations to build is facing new challenges,” Kishida said. “I understand it is a heavy burden to carry such hopes on your shoulders,” he said. “Japan is already standing shoulder to shoulder