The number of signatures collected for People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) passed the threshold required to register for participating in the January presidential election, PFP officials said yesterday.
As stipulated in Article 46 of the Constitution and Article 23 of the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法), presidential and vice presidential candidates must gather signatures amounting to 1.5 percent of voters in the most recent elections to demonstrate that the candidate enjoys popular support.
That means Soong needs 257,695 signatures to enter the presidential election.
PFP spokesperson Wu Kun-yu (吳崑玉) said the number of signatures in the first batch that the party is scheduled to deliver to the Central Election Commission’s (CEC) Taipei branch today likely exceed 300,000.
“We hope the CEC will not try to nitpick problems with the petitions,” he said.
As some of the petitions have not yet been processed, the PFP is also expected to turn in a second batch of signatures before Saturday’s deadline, which by law is the 45th day after Soong and running mate Lin Ruey-shiung (林瑞雄) applied to the commission to run in the presidential and vice presidential election.
To avoid any interference as the petitions are processed before they are sent to the commission, the PFP has kept the processing location a secret.
Once the petitions are submitted to the commission, the PFP will continue to make plans for the January presidential and legislative elections, including the announcement of another wave of legislative nominees and the announcement of its legislators-at-large list.
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