Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers are pushing to change the presidential election model to a two-round voting system.
KMT Legislator Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) is gathering signatures for a petition to amend the Constitution to require a two-round voting system, while KMT Legislator Weng Hsiao-ling (翁曉玲) is proposing an amendment to Article 63 of the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法), which currently states that the pair of candidates that receives the most votes are elected as president and vice president.
Under Weng’s proposal, the presidential and vice presidential pairing that receives more than half of the votes must also receive more than 20 percent of the votes from all eligible voters to win an election. If the candidates fail to meet that threshold in the first round, a second round, including the two sets of candidates with the most votes, would be held 14 days later, with the pair that receives the most votes winning.
Photo: CNA
In the current system, the candidates with the most votes win the election, but the votes they receive do not necessarily exceed more than half of the ballots from eligible voters, Weng said.
When the winning presidential and vice presidential candidates receive fewer than 50 percent of the votes from eligible voters and fewer than the sum of the other sets of candidates combined, they lack general public support, she said.
When the party they represent also fails to achieve a majority in the legislature and does not need to form a coalition government, a situation arises in which the few rule over the many, creating a possible constitutional crisis, she added.
Introducing a two-round voting system would not only determine which party has the support of most voters, but would also give smaller parties a chance to become part of the government, and make it necessary for parties to negotiate and work with each other, Weng said.
Many countries with direct presidential elections use a two-round voting system, she said.
Some even have exhaustive voting systems, while only Taiwan, South Korea and a few others use a hybrid system that combines the first-preference plurality system with block voting, she added.
Under such a system, candidates would not have to worry about the opinions of other voters and could concentrate on consolidating support from their voter base, which reduces the legitimacy of the election, Weng said.
If the president is elected under such a system, and refuses to compromise and negotiate with opposition parties, they would have a tough time governing, she said.
Two-round voting would not be required in every election, as a second round would not be necessary if the winning candidates receive votes from more than half of the eligible voters.
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