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.
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