Taiwan has entered a new era in ensuring clean elections, with technology helping to fight illegal money transfers, misinformation and other criminal activities during campaigning, Taipei prosecutors said yesterday as they opened a new election command center.
Equipped with the latest in telecommunications and digital technology, the center began operations at the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office with a trial run overseen by Minister of Justice Tsai Ching-hsiang (蔡清祥).
“The new technology assembled here will bolster? our efforts to monitor and crack down on election irregularities, and all public prosecutors ?are ready to undertake this work,”? Tsai said.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Upgrading technology to monitor vote-buying during campaigning is just one of the center’s tasks, as it would also serve as a public warning to candidates not to breach election laws or undertake criminal actions, as all prosecutors’ offices nationwide are to establish their own teams for next year’s elections, he said.
Taipei Chief District Prosecutor Hsing Tai-chao (邢泰釗) headed up the drive to establish the unit, which officials ?hailed as the nation’s first high-tech center for investigating illegal money flows, tracing criminal groups’ financing and combating international money laundering.
The first of three main focus areas at the center is preventing illegal funds, misinformation and violence by criminal gangs from interfering in elections, Hsing said.
“Second, the center is to apply the new technology to become a platform to coordinate investigations and compile information on vote-buying,” he said. “Third, it will enhance the public’s understanding about clean elections by educating people to refuse money offered by candidates and campaign workers in exchange for their vote.”
The center gives prosecutors the ability to conduct questioning via remote network monitoring and video conferencing; technology for digitalling collecting evidence and transmitting it to investigators in the field; as well as a national database on illegal election-related activities.
Preparations are under way to launch other centers next month in eight other jurisdictions in six more cities, Tsai said, adding that the digital and networking capabilities would be expanded to all district prosecutors’ offices nationwide by the end of October.
Once all of the centers are operational, the presidential and legislative elections in January next year would be their first major undertaking, officials said.
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