The Central Election Commission (CEC) yesterday officially posted Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) as the presidential and vice presidential elect, despite independent candidate James Soong's (宋楚瑜) call for a postponement due to alleged vote fraud.
The total number of votes won by the Chen-Lu ticket was 4,977,697, according to the CEC. CEC Chairman Huang Shih-cheng (
Huang said the commission has corrected the counting error and said the officials responsible would be punished.
After a correction, the total numbers of votes won by the Chen-Lu and Soong-Chang tickets were 4,977,697 and 4,664,972, respectively.
In Tainan, 100 valid ballots for the Soong-Chang ticket were found abandoned in a polling center located at the Min Teh Junior High School. After an investigation, it was found that the ballots had been counted and had only been left behind by mistake.
Suspecting that the incidents were part of "systematic" fraud, Soong's camp petitioned the Supreme Court and Taiwan High Court to invalidate the election results and launch an investigation into the incidents.
Soong had asked the CEC to re-examine the ballots, hold another election in the places in which the incidents took place and postpone the announcement of the names of the victorious candidates.
Responding to Soong's request, Huang said candidates have the right to file charges with judicial authorities within 15 days after the names of the elected candidates are posted.
"The CEC isn't empowered to re-examine the votes. This has to be done by the court," Huang said.
While visiting Tainan County yesterday, Soong also turned his focus to the DPP, calling on Chen to stand with him to hold a recount, insinuating that vote buying was rampant in Kaohsiung and Tainan Counties.
"Voting levels were extraordinarily high in Kaohsiung and Tainan County," Soong said. "If the spirit of the DPP's founding was to seek a higher quality of democracy, then it shouldn't let its candidate live in the shadow of possible vote buying or ballot box stuffing."
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