Cash prizes are to be awarded this year to Taipei borough wardens who get their constituents to polling stations in an effort to increase voter turnout in the Nov. 29 elections, the Taipei City Government’s Department of Civil Affairs Commissioner Huang Lu Ching-ju (黃呂錦茹) said yesterday.
She made her remarks at a press conference alongside people representing immigrants and young voters, urging city residents of all backgrounds to vote. The department is responsible for the city’s election budget.
While Taipei’s voter turnout has historically been higher than that of most other cities and counties, apathy toward the mayoral candidates could hinder the department reaching its voter turnout goal of 71 percent, Huang said.
The previous mayoral election in 2009 had a 70.65 percent voter turnout, according to department statistics.
Huang said that next month, the department would provide cash rewards to borough wardens, borough administrative secretaries and district offices for increasing voter turnout in their respective boroughs or districts.
Borough chiefs and administrative secretaries would be given a supermarket gift card for NT$1,000 for each percentage point that voter turnout in their boroughs exceeds 71 percent, she said, adding that district offices which reach this goal would be given NT$10,000 to be divided among their workers.
She said that this would be the first time that such a financial reward for increasing voter turnout has been provided during a mayoral election.
National Taiwan University politics professor Wang Ye-li (王業立) yesterday said that while it was impossible to predict how effective the new measures would be at increasing the voting rate, any increase would likely benefit the campaign of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文).
Although voter affiliation in Taipei is strongly tilted toward the pan-blue camp, the KMT’s supporters have been apathetic about Lien’s candidacy, he said.
Democratic Progressive Party City Councilor Chien Yu-yen (簡余晏), the spokeswoman for independent Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), yesterday said “the majority of borough wardens belong to the KMT.”
“We call on the Taipei City Government to maintain neutrality and avoid excess executive intervention in the election,” she said, adding that the voting rate in normal democratic countries is about 50 percent, unless there is extreme political polarization.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS