Taiwan is small and mountainous, encompassing a limited land area. Regional development is quite uneven and people tend to move to urban areas for work or study. This results in discrepancies between their registered household address and their actual place of residence. Thus, during elections, people often need to spend time or money to return home to vote. This — while great for democracy — often leads to much public discontent.
The Executive Yuan in February 2016 proposed a draft amendment to the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法) that aimed to expand the implementation of the absentee voting system to broaden political participation and deepen democracy. The proposal was short-lived — it was withdrawn, and no new version of the bill has been introduced. In its place, the Executive Yuan proposed a bill that would allow for absentee voting in national referendums. The bill was not very controversial, largely because Taiwanese are not particularly enthusiastic about voting in referendums.
Due to the political composition of the legislature, an absentee and mail-in voting system is very likely to be reviewed and passed this year. Furthermore, the scope of its application could extend not only to the 2028 presidential and legislative elections, but could also be implemented earlier, possibly in time for the local “nine-in-one” elections to be held at the end of next year.
From a global perspective, Taiwan is highly regarded and admired by the international community for its adherence to traditional in-person voting, rapid and continuous vote counting, and its ability to announce election results the same night. The core of any election is public trust. During the period of authoritarian rule from 1949 to 1987, Taiwan learned painful lessons from multiple incidents of severe election fraud. A traditional and highly transparent electoral process was developed as a result. Possessing a credible electoral system is the lifeline of Taiwan’s democratic system. If lost, democracy would be doomed to collapse.
An absentee voting system might appear simple and convenient, but in practice, its implementation requires detailed and complex considerations. The local elections serve as a good example.
If a citizen with household registration in Kaohsiung wants to vote at the polling station near their current residence in Taipei, how should that polling station handle the process? How should the ballot boxes be arranged? How should the ballots be counted? How should the vote be transmitted back to the voter’s registered constituency?
There are a number of complicated and puzzling issues, each giving rise to further questions. Moreover, if the process were to ultimately lengthen the voting and ballot counting period, thereby breaking Taiwan’s longstanding custom of finishing the count on the same night and causing results to be delayed by several days, would voters be able to accept that? Additionally, if the final outcome of an election were to hinge on ballots transferred from other districts rather than those cast locally, would the losing candidate be willing to accept their defeat?
Trustworthy electoral systems are difficult to build and can be destroyed in the blink of an eye. As the absentee and mail-in voting system approaches implementation — and the Constitutional Court remains effectively paralyzed — crucial questions must be considered. How should the Executive Yuan respond to the challenges this new law would pose? How would citizens express their opinions? Together, this could constitute a test of the nation’s democracy.
Lo Cheng-chung is a professor and director of Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology’s Institute of Financial and Economic Law.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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