The Keelung Election Commission would be required to verify a petition submitted by a campaign drive to recall Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the Central Election Commission said yesterday.
Under the Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法), an election commission is responsible for verifying the list of signatories and removing invalid signatures from the count within 40 days of a petition’s submission, the commission said in a statement.
The “Shanhai citizens’ movement to remove Liang” said the petition comprising 40,000 signatures was submitted to the Keelung Election Commission yesterday afternoon.
Photo: Lu Hsien-hsiu, Taipei Times
The number of signatures received has exceeded the threshold (30,792 signatures) required to initiate a recall vote.
The law stipulates that a recall of the mayor of an administrative region can be initiated if at least 10 percent of the area’s voters sign a petition supporting it.
After the signatures have been reviewed, if the final count is below the threshold, the Keelung commission is to return the petition to proponents and give them 10 days to make up the difference.
If enough valid signatures are collected, a recall vote should be held in 20 to 60 days, Article 87 of the law stipulates.
The procedures and standards of a recall election would be the same as in previous cases, the commission said, citing the example of Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT, who was recalled from his Kaohsiung mayorship in 2020.
For a recall vote to succeed, the number of votes cast in favor would have to exceed those cast against it and equal at least one-quarter of all eligible voters in the district.
Considering that 312,207 people in Keelung were eligible to vote in the presidential election in January, about 78,000 people would have to support the recall for it to have a chance to pass.
The move to recall Hsieh, who has been in office since 2022, was initiated in March after a dispute over the controversial changing of the operator of Keelung E-Square Mall (基隆東岸商場).
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