The Ministry of the Interior (MOI) is mulling a plan to lower the threshold for referendums and will make the final decision by the end of the year, Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said yesterday.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) had asked the ministry to examine the possibility of lowering the referendum threshold following a complaint by the Taiwan Solidarity Union that it was too high, Jiang said.
According to the Referendum Act (公民投票法), the petitioner of a referendum must gather signatures from at least 0.5 percent of the total number of eligible voters from the previous presidential election for the first phase. After the Referendum Review Committee grants initial approval to the proposal, the petitioner must then collect endorsements from at least 5 percent of the total number of eligible voters from the previous presidential election.
Once a referendum proposal can be voted on, at least 50 percent of the eligible voters must cast their votes, and of them, at least 50 percent of those who voted must vote “yes” for the petition to be passed.
For instance, to make it to poll stations, a referendum held in 2008 on whether Taiwan should seek UN membership required an endorsement from 8.65 million eligible voters, followed by 4.32 million “yes” votes to pass. However, since less than 40 percent of the eligible voters voted in the referendum, the UN membership referendum was de facto voted down.
Jiang pointed out that public discussions about reform of the referendum system have focused on whether the Referendum Review Committee should be abolished, whether the threshold is too high and how petition statements should be written. However, he said, few people at a public hearing last month believed the Referendum Review Committee should be abolished, while many thought that the threshold could be adjusted.
Another issue Jiang pointed out was the possibility of confusion from how a referendum question could be posed.
He cited as an example a referendum on abolishing capital punishment. If there were not enough people voting on the question, “Do you support the death penalty?” the result would indicate public opposition to the death penalty. Conversely, the proposal to abolish capital punishment would be de facto voted down if not enough people voted for a referendum that asks: “Do you support abolition of the death penalty?”
Jiang said the ministry would look further into the referendum laws of other countries to see how it could improve the referendum system, as well as holding more public hearings on the issue.
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck off Taitung County at 1:09pm today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 53km northeast of Taitung County Hall at a depth of 12.5km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Taitung County and Hualien County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Nantou County, Chiayi County, Yunlin County, Kaohsiung and Tainan, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage following the quake.
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