A draft bill from the Central Election Commission (CEC) would allow absentee voting on referendums across municipal and county lines, but would not allow for voting abroad or online, a source said yesterday.
Opposition party members have been calling for the implementation of absentee voting, but the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has opposed it, citing concerns over information security and fraud.
Due to such concerns, the commission’s bill — which has been submitted to the Executive Yuan for review — would not contain provisions for voting online or from abroad, the source said, adding that people would have to apply to be eligible for absentee voting.
Article 25 of the Referendum Act (公民投票法) allows for absentee voting, but says that its implementation “shall be prescribed in a separate law.”
Despite numerous calls for such a law over the past several years, it has remained a controversial topic, the source said.
The Executive Yuan said it would review the bill before passing it on to the Legislative Yuan, but said it also plans to meet with the DPP caucus to discuss how different proposals could be integrated.
“The current bill would only allow voting outside of a voter’s registered city or county if they are unable to return home, and if they are voting in the city or county where they work or study,” the source said.
Voter information would also have to be verified with the Department of Household Registration, the source said.
Attitudes in the DPP toward absentee voting remain conservative, the source said, adding that some DPP members have pointed to issues with mailed-in ballots in the most recent US presidential election. There were also information security concerns that would make online voting questionable, the source said.
“People move around a lot for school and work, and there is this idea that absentee voting is the current trend. However, the DPP is remaining prudent in the face of so many concerns,” the source said.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has called for an extraordinary legislative session to discuss the bill, but the Executive Yuan said that the level 3 COVID-19 alert would make that impossible.
The Executive Yuan said the scope of the bill should be discussed at the legislature’s next regular session.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
RSS