The Central Election Commission said yesterday it would be “impossible” to implement absentee voting if the presidential and legislative elections were held at the same time next year.
“The decision [on absentee voting] is the MOI’s [Ministry of the Interior’s] call, and is not directly related to us,” Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairwoman Chang Po-ya (張博雅) told a news conference in Taipei.
“We’re currently in the process of deciding whether the presidential election and the legislative election should be held on the same date [in 2012]. We have not yet reached a conclusion, but the MOI can continue its efforts to push for absentee voting at the same time.”
“We would neither intervene nor criticize the MOI over absentee voting,” Chang added.
She was referring to a report in the Chinese-language Apple Daily yesterday that said she openly disagreed with the absentee voting plan Deputy Minister of the Interior Chien Tai-lang (簡太郎), who is also a member of the commission, proposed during a routine meeting on Tuesday.
Chang said, however, that if the commission decides to hold the next presidential and legislative elections together, “it would be impossible to implement absentee voting next year, but of course, the MOI could still push for amending the law to allow absentee voting some other time when elections are held separately.”
She added that for the legislative election alone, the commission has to print 75 different types of ballots — including one for each of the 73 electoral districts, one for plains Aborigines representative and one for mountain Aborigines—and it would be too complicated to have absentee voting at the same time.
At a separate setting, Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said absentee voting would be “very challenging” if the commission decided to hold the presidential and legislative vote at the same time. However, he denied that the ministry and the commission were at odds with each other as the Apple Daily reported.
“I have very good communication with Chang, and both the MOI and the CEC are working on the two issues [absentee voting and combined elections] separately at the same time,” Jiang said. “We don’t intervene in each other’s work.”
Jiang said the commission would announce its final decision on whether the legislative and presidential elections would be held separately or together next year.
“If the elections are to be held separately, we will certainly implement absentee voting next year, but if they are to be held together, then we’ll look and see if implementing absentee voting would make it too complicated for the election staff,” the minister said. “We may then decide not to have absentee voting if that’s the case.”
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