Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on Wednesday rejected suggestions of large-scale voter fraud, saying it was unlikely in Taiwan’s mature democracy.
Following his third-place finish in the presidential election on Saturday, some of Ko’s supporters have suggested that voter fraud is to blame for the discrepancy between the party’s polling and the official results.
TPP internal polling was inaccurate not because they were faked, as some have suggested, but because it gave heavier weighting to younger voters, Ko told reporters, adding that the result would have been closer if the turnout were higher than 71 percent.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The campaign was unsuccessful at reaching older voters and encouraging people to vote, he said.
There might have been some minor voting anomalies, but large-scale voter fraud is unlikely in a mature democracy like Taiwan’s, Ko added.
On Tuesday evening, Ko on Facebook wrote that many of his supporters had been contacting the TPP headquarters or posting accusations of voter fraud on social media, claiming to have seen hundreds of stolen votes, discrepancies in the count and other anomalies.
Although the Central Election Commission guaranteed there were no problems in the voting process, “so many mistakes of varying sizes have invariably raised questions among the public,” he wrote, calling for a better approach.
He also detailed the party’s internal polling methodology in a bid to dispel accusations that they had been faked to insinuate the race was closer than it was.
Additional reporting by CNA
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