College students launched a crowdfunding campaign to charter buses to take students home to vote for the presidential and legislative elections on Saturday, saying the campaign would help young people participate in democracy and exercise their rights.
Student association leaders from National Taiwan, National Chengchi and National Yang-Ming universities as well as Mackay Medical College yesterday told a news conference in Taipei that they raised funds to pay for students to travel home so they can to boost voter numbers.
A majority of college students study away from home and the cost of bus fare and travel time could deter people from going home to vote. The campaign was organized to help young people exercise their political rights, the leaders said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“It is a display of direct democracy that students go home and vote. It allows young people to express their voice and exercise their rights,” National Chengchi University student association president Chen Yi-lin (陳億霖) said.
About 145 charter buses with a total capacity of 2,500 seats have been offered free of charge or at a discounted price to students at various locations. Buses are scheduled to depart on Friday after the exam week, Chen said.
The campaign expanded on a similar 2014 crowdfunding campaign organized by Taiwan Citizen Union that financed students to return home and vote. This year’s campaign is expected to see a 10 percent increase in the number of voters who return home, Chen said.
National Yang-Ming University student association president Chen Chia-ching (陳佳菁) said that Taiwan has 18.81 million registered voters and 5.11 million of them are aged between 20 and 34, while first-time voters account for 6.8 percent of total voters, making the younger voter group a key player in determining election outcomes.
Asia University student and member of the Independent Youth Front Liu Hui-chung (劉惠中) said about six out of 10 voters aged between 20 and 40 turned out for the last election, but young voter turnout increased to more than 70 percent in the nine-in-one elections in 2014, and the 10 percent increase was what overturned the traditional political territory.
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
Taiwan plans to cull as many as 120,000 invasive green iguanas this year to curb the species’ impact on local farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Chiu Kuo-hao (邱國皓), a section chief in the ministry’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, on Sunday said that green iguanas have been recorded across southern Taiwan and as far north as Taichung. Although there is no reliable data on the species’ total population in the country, it has been estimated to be about 200,000, he said. Chiu said about 70,000 iguanas were culled last year, including about 45,000 in Pingtung County, 12,000 in Tainan, 9,900 in
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
ALLEGED SABOTAGE: The damage inflicted by the vessel did not affect connection, as data were immediately rerouted to other cables, Chunghwa Telecom said Taiwan suspects that a Chinese-owned cargo vessel damaged an undersea cable near its northeastern coast on Friday, in an alleged act of sabotage that highlights the vulnerabilities of Taipei’s offshore communications infrastructure. The ship is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company whose director is Chinese, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. An unidentified Taiwanese official cited in the report described the case as sabotage. The incident followed another Chinese vessel’s suspected involvement in the breakages of data cables in the Baltic Sea in November last year. While fishing trawlers are known to sometimes damage such equipment, nation states have also
RSS