Ballot Counting in Keelung Mayor George Hsieh Recall Vote
Ballot counting has begun in the recall vote against Keelung Mayor George Hsieh, with results too close to call.
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00:00Election officials are counting the ballots from Jilong's mayoral recall vote.
00:04City residents voted this morning on whether George Xie should be removed from office amid
00:09accusations of incompetence and possible corruption.
00:13Joyce Zeng joins us now live from Jilong.
00:16Joyce, how's the count looking?
00:18Hey Tiffany, we're just an hour out from polls closing and vote count starting and right
00:27now it's just too close to call.
00:29There are mixed reports of voter turnout rates ranging from 40 percent all the way
00:35up to 60 percent, currently with more votes against the recall of Jilong Mayor George
00:40Xie than for it.
00:42But again, votes are still being counted.
00:44Right now we're at Xie's party, the Kuomintang, or KMT's headquarters in Jilong where they
00:49have live updates of the votes being counted on that screen right there.
00:54Several politicians from the party have also been coming out to give speeches in support
00:59of Xie and the civic group who tried to remove the mayor from office have argued that he's
01:05incompetent, accusing him of allegedly mishandling a shopping mall development in the city where
01:12they suspect there to be abuse of power.
01:15Now this local city issue has boiled over into clashes between the country's two main
01:20parties, the KMT and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, the KMT claiming
01:26that the DPP are backing the activists against Xie to chip away at the party's standing.
01:32DPP politicians have come out to say that Xie and the KMT should be focusing on the
01:38civic group's demands rather than seeing this recall election as a political matter.
01:44Now to recall a mayor in Taiwan is quite difficult.
01:47It's only been done once before and that was the removal of Han Kuo-yu of Kaohsiung in
01:532020.
01:54As to whether that number will change today, the results of Xie's recall vote are expected
01:59to come in in about an hour.
02:01Tiffany?