More than 83 percent of the nation’s 23 million people are eligible to vote in the local elections in November, including 760,000 first-time voters, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said yesterday.
In the nine-in-one elections on Nov. 26, voters will be electing 11,023 public officials at all levels of local government, CEC Chairperson Lee Chin-yung (李進勇) said shortly after the commission published a notice for candidate registration.
Registration will be open from Monday to Friday next week for candidates for special municipality mayors and councilors, county commissioners and councilors, indigenous district representatives and councilors, township mayors and councilors, and borough wardens or village chiefs, the notice said.
Photo copied by Wang Jung-hsiang,Taipei Times
About 19.3 million Taiwanese — or more than 83 percent of the population — aged 20 or older are eligible to cast their ballots, including 760,000 first-time voters, it said.
Alongside the local government elections, a national referendum on whether the voting age should be lowered to 18 is to be held.
If the referendum passes, it would require an amendment to the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution to lower the voting age to 18.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
The threshold for passage of the referendum is a “yes” vote by at least 50 percent of the nation’s 19.3 million eligible voters, which is double the 25 percent approval required in referendums on non-constitutional issues.
The 113-seat Legislative Yuan on March 25 voted 109-0 to send the issue to a referendum.
The ROC Constitution has been amended seven times since it was ratified in 1947. The most recent change was in 2004 to dissolve the National Assembly and pass on its power of constitutional amendments to the electorate.
The CEC is to employ about 300,000 people to work at an estimated 17,648 polling stations nationwide, Lee said.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said it had deployed patrol vessels to expel a China Coast Guard ship and a Chinese fishing boat near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. The China Coast Guard vessel was 28 nautical miles (52km) northeast of Pratas at 6:15am on Thursday, approaching the island’s restricted waters, which extend 24 nautical miles from its shoreline, the CGA’s Dongsha-Nansha Branch said in a statement. The Tainan, a 2,000-tonne cutter, was deployed by the CGA to shadow the Chinese ship, which left the area at 2:39pm on Friday, the statement said. At 6:31pm on Friday,
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, would pose a steep challenge to Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against a full-scale invasion, a defense expert said yesterday. Institute of National Defense and Security Research analyst Chieh Chung (揭仲) made the comment hours after the PLAN confirmed the carrier recently passed through the Taiwan Strait to conduct “scientific research tests and training missions” in the South China Sea. China has two carriers in operation — the Liaoning and the Shandong — with the Fujian undergoing sea trials. Although the PLAN needs time to train the Fujian’s air wing and
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) put Taiwan in danger, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said yesterday, hours after the de facto US embassy said that Beijing had misinterpreted World War II-era documents to isolate Taiwan. The AIT’s comments harmed the Republic of China’s (ROC) national interests and contradicted a part of the “six assurances” stipulating that the US would not change its official position on Taiwan’s sovereignty, Hsiao said. The “six assurances,” which were given by then-US president Ronald Reagan to Taiwan in 1982, say that Washington would not set a date for ending arm sales to Taiwan, consult
A Taiwanese academic yesterday said that Chinese Ambassador to Denmark Wang Xuefeng (王雪峰) disrespected Denmark and Japan when he earlier this year allegedly asked Japan’s embassy to make Taiwan’s representatives leave an event in Copenhagen. The Danish-language Berlingske on Sunday reported the incident in an article with the headline “The emperor’s birthday ended in drama in Copenhagen: More conflict may be on the way between Denmark and China.” It said that on Feb. 26, the Japanese embassy in Denmark held an event for Japanese Emperor Naruhito’s birthday, with about 200 guests in attendance, including representatives from Taiwan. After addressing the Japanese hosts, Wang
RSS