There is no legal basis to set up special polling stations for people with COVID-19 who are under home isolation, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said yesterday.
Political figures have urged the commission to provide options for people with COVID-19 to vote on Nov. 26 after it last week said that people who are under orders to isolate at home would not be allowed out to vote.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus on Tuesday cited practices in other countries.
Japan allowed family members of quarantined voters to cast an absentee ballot for them, South Korea extended voting periods by 90 minutes, with the added time reserved for people in quarantine, and the US allowed anyone to vote in person, but asked people with COVID-19 to wear a mask and practice social distancing, the KMT said.
CEC Deputy Chairman Chen Chao-chien (陳朝建) yesterday said that voting is a basic right, so people can do so as long as they can legally leave their home, but the right to health should also be considered.
People with COVID-19 in Japan, South Korea and the US could vote in previous elections because those nations have mail-in ballots, early voting and specialized polling stations, adaptations based on their domestic laws, Chen said, adding that the regulations in Taiwan are different.
Article 17 of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) stipulates that people can only vote at polling stations designated for their household registration, with the only exception being staff at polling stations, who can vote at the polling station they work at, he said.
There is no legal basis to allow mail-in ballots or set up special polling stations, he said.
Some people have asked why special rooms for school-entrance exams can be set up for students with COVID-19, but special polling stations cannot be set up, Chen said.
The answer is: The law does not limit where students are to sit a test based on their household registration, he said.
There are to be 17,649 polling stations and if a special booth were set up at every one, some would be used by many voters with COVID-19, but some might be used by a single voter, which would cause problems with ensuring that ballots are kept secret, he said.
If the Central Epidemic Command Center changes COVID-19 restrictions before the elections, the CEC would cooperate with the latest policies, he added.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS