Taipei City's two constituencies yesterday became the first areas targeted by the DPP in its drive to achieve an even distribution of votes among its candidates in the Dec. 1 elections. The move comes after the party's secretary-general announced last week that it intended to adopt the strategy across the nation.
The DPP's hope is to maximize the chance of all the party's candidates getting elected. It targets all known party supporters in an area and has proven effective for both the DPP and the New Party in past legislative elections. The DPP's northern district general director Lin Cho-shui (
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
The party estimates that a low voter turnout, combined with an unusually large number of candidates, will make for thin margins in the number of votes received per candidate. It believes that seeking a relatively even distribution of votes will help each of its candidates to receive a specific minimum number of votes.
Vote allocation -- the system used by the DPP -- involves requesting known individual supporters to vote for specific individual candidates.
According to a DPP survey, between 30 and 40 percent of the party's supporters are prepared to vote for the candidate for whom the party instructs them to vote. The party calculates that, given this survey result, each nominated candidate in Taipei's northern district is guaranteed 15,000 votes. It also estimates that a candidate would need to secure 34,000 votes to win election to the legislature.
The party said it will ask supporters to vote for different candidates depending on the supporter's national identity card number.
For instance, voters in Taipei City's northern district whose ID card numbers end in "one" or "two" are asked to vote for Lan Shih-tsung (
"Allocating votes will help to push individual candidates past the margin necessary for election," Lin said.
Julian Kuo (
"Whether the strategy proves effective will depend on whether voters have more faith in party politics than they do in individual candidates, and the degree of cooperation among the party's candidates in each individual constituency," Kuo said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats