Article 59 of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) states: “A supervisor in each polling station may be recommended by the candidates recommended by the political parties of which the obtained vote rate has totaled not less than 5 percent in the latest national integrated election.”
Evidently, political parties have engineered it so they can influence another aspect of the electoral process and how official agencies conduct elections.
Polling station supervisors can uphold the interests and confidence of the candidates, and each candidate — for a deposit of a specific amount — has the right to recommend a supervisor to represent them. Candidates who are not affiliated with any party, on the other hand, are left to their own devices and are often left fending off pervasive affronts by major parties.
It is difficult to see fairness or justice in only allowing political parties to recommend polling station supervisors, especially since most political parties tend to put their own interests before the nation’s or the public’s.
Therefore, it is clear that the political parties conspired to get some control over elections when they drafted Article 59 of the act, a process dominated by whichever party is in office. This is to be condemned in the strongest terms.
The electoral system ought to be built upon justice, fairness, independence and neutrality, as well as non-alignment with political parties; not on the whims of those parties. If major parties have a monopoly on the selection of polling station supervisors, if they can seek to benefit from the posts and interfere in this aspect of the voting process, then the public should harbor grave doubts about the integrity of the electoral system, especially given the sensitive nature of the polling station supervisor role.
This is collusion between the main parties to snuff out their smaller rivals, stifle emerging parties and squeeze out non-affiliated candidates.
The current political scene is in dire straits. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has proved it is ignorant, shameless, incompetent and utterly untrustworthy, as well as having a popularity rating of only 9 percent. The opposition has shown itself entirely unable to check corruption in the ruling party. How these parties can be trusted to have anything to do with how elections are conducted is beyond belief.
Article 55 of the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法) gives all candidates the right to recommend polling station supervisors, while Article 8 of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act stipulates that “there shall be nonpolitical-party persons in an election commission, and the number of those who are in a same political party shall be not more than 2/5 of the total commissioners in the Central Election Commission, or 1/2 of the total commissioners in a municipal or county (city) election commission.”
This gives certain guarantees to non-party affiliated individuals, and acknowledges the importance of having non-party affiliations for the electoral process to be fair and just.
Articles 59 and 55 of the respective acts allow candidates to recommend polling station supervisors, but the former contradicts the spirit of the stipulation that “there shall be nonpolitical-party persons” in an election commission. Legislators should amend this irregularity promptly. Polling station supervisors must be recommended by each candidate, and the role of non-party affiliated candidates should be valued to establish fair and credible elections if the change is to have a positive impact on the development of democratic elections.
Huang Shih-cheng is a former chairman of the Central Election Commission.
Translated by Paul Cooper
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
As an American living in Taiwan, I have to confess how impressed I have been over the years by the Chinese Communist Party’s wholehearted embrace of high-speed rail and electric vehicles, and this at a time when my own democratic country has chosen a leader openly committed to doing everything in his power to put obstacles in the way of sustainable energy across the board — and democracy to boot. It really does make me wonder: “Are those of us right who hold that democracy is the right way to go?” Has Taiwan made the wrong choice? Many in China obviously
US President Donald Trump last week announced plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on eight countries. As Taiwan, a key hub for semiconductor manufacturing, is among them, the policy would significantly affect the country. In response, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) dispatched two officials to the US for negotiations, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) board of directors convened its first-ever meeting in the US. Those developments highlight how the US’ unstable trade policies are posing a growing threat to Taiwan. Can the US truly gain an advantage in chip manufacturing by reversing trade liberalization? Is it realistic to
About 6.1 million couples tied the knot last year, down from 7.28 million in 2023 — a drop of more than 20 percent, data from the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs showed. That is more serious than the precipitous drop of 12.2 percent in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the saying goes, a single leaf reveals an entire autumn. The decline in marriages reveals problems in China’s economic development, painting a dismal picture of the nation’s future. A giant question mark hangs over economic data that Beijing releases due to a lack of clarity, freedom of the press
RSS