About 100 people yesterday took part in an open-air public forum outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei to discuss proposals on electoral reforms for the legislature, amid mounting criticism over the current electoral system.
Led by Taiwan Democracy Watch, the organizers invited participants to brainstorm possible electoral reforms, saying that current legislative institutions have failed to adequately reflect diverse views and groups in society.
“We must tackle this question: Is our democracy simply the rule of a majority, or should it convey diversity?” human rights lawyer Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) said during introductory comments at the forum.
One of the major issues discussed at the forum was a perceived discrepancy between the percentage of votes a party receives and the number of seats it wins.
As an example, Lai cited the 2008 legislative elections, in which the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) garnered three-quarters of legislative seats, despite only receiving around 53 percent of the popular vote.
Lai said that the discrepancy was due to 70 percent of the seats in the legislature being derived from single-member constituencies, which he described as a “winner take all” system that fails to represent votes proportionally.
He said that legislators-at-large — which are allocated according to proportional representation based on predetermined party-nominated lists — should be increased to address the problem.
Other participants called for the need to lower the 5 percent threshold for legislature-at-large seats, as smaller parties are rarely able to attain 5 percent of the popular vote.
Two legislators have submitted proposals for legislative electoral reform — the KMT’s Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟) and the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Lee Ying-yuan (李應元).
Both proposals suggest an increase in the total amount of legislators. While the DPP version adds 43 additional legislator-at-large seats, the KMT version proposes a mix of 30 additional legislators-at-large and seven new district legislators.
The two proposals also differ in that the KMT supports the continued use of a parallel voting system, while the DPP aims to adopt a German-influenced mixed-member proportional representational system, in which the total amount of seats — the sum of district seats and legislator-at-large seats — is determined by the proportion of party votes.
The event was part of a series of grassroots forums launched by the Civic Alliance to Promote Constitutional Reform, a group advocating amendments to the Constitution by inviting increased public participation.
Given that legislative electoral regulations are written in the Constitution, an amendment would be required to enact any proposed reforms.
By law, amendments to the Constitution need to be ratified by a popular referendum, which must be announced six months prior. Ongoing discussions have suggested that a referendum be held concurrently with the presidential and legislative elections in January next year.
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