Analysis: Legalizing Absentee Voting in Taiwan
Incoming legislators from two parties may make or break a potential vote on legalizing absentee voting in Taiwan. TaiwanPlus spoke with Brian Hioe of New Bloom magazine to learn more.
Transcript
00:00 Why is absentee voting not allowed in Taiwan and why is it so controversial?
00:04 Absentee voting has been one of these long discussed issues in Taiwanese politics
00:08 and how the political parties stand on that diverges based on the pan-blue and pan-green camps.
00:14 There's been a lot of concern, for example, regarding that there are many Taiwanese living in China.
00:18 And during elections, with the hope that they will vote in support of the KMT or pan-blue parties,
00:24 the Chinese government increases the number of flights between Taiwan and China around the time of elections
00:28 or before the time of elections.
00:30 And so the fear is then that if there was absentee balloting,
00:34 this would lead to Taishong, this group of Taiwanese businessmen that are working in China,
00:38 usually businessmen, voting as a block for pro-China policies.
00:43 And so the DPP has been more opposed to this, whereas the KMT is more in favor of this.
00:47 Why do you think both the KMT and TPP are pushing for this now?
00:52 Will this benefit either of their groups in some way?
00:55 The KMT sees itself as likely to benefit.
00:58 But I kind of wonder to what extent that is based on an outmoded view of the world,
01:02 because, as I mentioned, I don't think actually Taishong are the most dominant group now or the most numerous.
01:07 And so I'm not sure if actually the KMT is working on the right frame here, a current frame,
01:12 something it might be working on an outdated view of the situation.
01:16 The TPP, on the other hand, I think it's actually just proposing a lot of ideas all at once.
01:20 For example, despite that there are all these concerns regarding election interference,
01:23 their vice presidential candidate, Cynthia Wu, called for online voting.
01:27 And that was how they proposed absentee ballots, not even in the form of paper, for example,
01:31 but in terms of online systems.
01:33 And of course, there's all this concern about hacking and disinformation and falsification of identity.
01:38 It's actually kind of unusual that you would actually call for electronic voting just to take place online
01:42 when, for example, we have all these polls that are conducted online that are criticized as unscientific
01:46 and meant to influence the elections.
01:48 And what about the DPP? Would they support this policy?
01:52 I think probably not. But then the DPP will have to make concessions to appear democratic.
01:58 It really wants to avoid the accusation that's infringing upon or violating the democratic process
02:02 or trying to disenfranchise certain people from the vote.
02:05 What's interesting is there are some cases under the time when there were people that were disenfranchised from the vote,
02:10 for example, during COVID with the large amount of people that were quarantined in the 2022 election cycle.
02:15 And the government would refuse to make measures for them, even though there are calls to stagger the times
02:19 for people to come in or have another voting day just for people that were under quarantine and things like that.
02:25 And so the DPP has been pretty reluctant to make any moves, actually.
02:29 And so going as far as absentee ballots, I think it's quite unlikely.
02:32 [BLANK_AUDIO]