Since the presidential and legislative elections on Jan. 13, absentee voting has once again become part of national discourse. Stories of Taiwanese returning from far-flung places across the globe are heartwarming ahead of elections, but always initiate pause for recourse in the weeks that follow.
Why should a citizen living abroad have to dig into their savings to exercise their democratic right? Why should a person working in Taipei have to fight the crowd to return to a hometown they never visit? Even more galling, why do politicians continue to allow thousands of military service members and prisoners to be de facto disenfranchised?
Proponents of absentee voting rightly point to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights for moral grounding. Surely democracies have a duty to ensure the rights of their citizens. Many other mature democracies allow absentee voting of some kind, whether by mail, representative office, drop box, proxies or, less commonly, online. Although these systems are theoretically more susceptible to fraud, very little evidence of anything more than individual anomalies have been found.
Countries use a variety of security measures, such as an individualized serial number printed on each voter’s ballot like in the US. Taiwan has a wealth of experience to draw from, and plenty of bureaucratic might to pull it off.
Then again, Taiwan is not like other democracies.
When faced with a perennial adversary looking for any opportunity to interfere in its elections, the government must balance its obligation to uphold citizen rights and its duty to ensure trustworthy elections. Even with security measures, Beijing would be dedicated to finding loopholes. Taiwanese voters must wade through a plethora of meddling from across the Strait, as the latest elections made sparklingly clear. It is miraculous that Taiwan maintains credible elections, even with relentless disinformation, propaganda junket trips and vote buying.
As opponents of absentee voting say: Why fix what is not broken?
The question is a thorny one, which explains the decades-long hemming and hawing. Politicians have been calling for some form of absentee voting even before the first direct presidential election was held in 1996. The opposition party usually takes up the cause, only to hedge it again when they get in office. The cycle has started again, with new Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators last month vowing to push the issue in the name of democracy and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators reiterating the causes for concern.
Yet there might be a glimmer of hope on the horizon, again. The DPP on Thursday last week approved a bill that would allow absentee voting — but only in referendums. It also rules out voting by mail, seeking instead to only allow in-person voting from districts outside a voter’s registered residence, for which they must apply at least 60 days in advance.
The bill made rounds once in 2020, but failed to clear the legislature in time. Now, the Cabinet has proposed it again, hopefully before a more receptive audience: opposition lawmakers who only weeks before vowed to rectify this very issue.
The bill is not a remedy to Taiwan’s enfranchisement problem, but it is a start. Absentee voting only in referendums is just an attempt to run a “low stakes” trial of a solution that already has low stakes. Allowing in-person voting from different districts within Taiwan comes with little risk and great reward, making it a political no-brainer.
The greatest concern regarding absentee voting would be voting from abroad. Hopefully, the legislature could soon clear this hurdle so that it could focus on the next one, as voters are waiting.
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