An absentee ballot is a vote cast by an eligible voter who is unable or unwilling to visit their designated polling station. Numerous methods have been devised to facilitate absentee voting. Increasing the ease of access to absentee ballots is seen by many as one way to improve voter turnout, though some countries require that a valid reason, such as infirmity or travel, be given before a voter can participate in an absentee ballot.
Many countries in the world have such a law to let every one of their citizens vote in national elections. The United States, for instance, has the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) dealing with elections and voting rights for American citizens residing overseas. Signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, the UOCAVA allows members of the armed forces, members of the merchant marine, their eligible family members, U.S, citizens employed by the federal government residing outside the United States and other private citizens living abroad. It is a pity that Taiwan doesn't have an absentee voting act.
In this column, I have called for absentee voting a couple of times. The first call appeared more than a decade ago. No politicians cared, of course, for they never read the op-ed page of The China Post and some vernacular newspapers in Taipei. Until Eric Chu, mayor of New Taipei City, pointed out the important linkage between absentee voting and a large voter turnout in an article in the op-ed page of The China Times.
The reason for an absentee voting act, he argues is practical, but I have argued for it because depriving a citizen of his voting right by ordering him to vote in an election district where he has his household registration is unconstitutional. In the United States or the United Kingdom, the law requires eligible voters to register the place where they wish to vote. They are not absentee voters, because they have to go to the polls in any election districts where they wish to cast their ballots so long as they remain in their homeland. That is why there are absentee voting acts to enable them to vote out of country.
In Taiwan, however, the voters are required to attend the polling stations in the election precincts of their abode. That is the reason why Mayor Chu wishes many nonpermanent residents of his city would not go back to their hometowns but stay in the city to vote to increase its turnout. Even government employees abroad, including ambassadors and their staff, are told to return to their homes in Taiwan if they wish to vote in a national election.
The timing is just right for Chu to air the idea of absentee voting. All politicians have given an enthusiastically attentive ear to his call, aimed solely at getting a large turnout for a Kuomintang-proposed referendum intended not to be adopted so that Taiwan's Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, known popularly as Nuke 4, at Gongliao, a small borough in his city, may be completed by the end of this year. The Kuomintang knows full well that the referendum will not pass because the turnout is sure to be less than 50 percent to invalidate it, but wishes to please the querulous anti-nuclear activists, while politicians of the Democratic Progressive Party in opposition believe they have a chance to turn the tables on the powers that be if they can get half of the electorate to go to the polls.
As a natural and inevitable consequence, the opposition party insists that the referendum law be so amended as to allow eligible voters to cast their absentee ballots in places where they reside rather than where they have their household registered. Opposition politicians do not want a uniformed and overseas absentee voting act, but the ruling party wishes to have it, not for the forthcoming referendum but for the presidential and legislative elections scheduled for 2016. The Kuomintang is convinced that members of the armed forces and Taiwan businesspeople in China as well as their family members will vote for it overwhelming and for that reason the opposition party is arguing for non-abode absentee voting just for the Nuke 4 referendum.
A nationwide anti-nuclear demonstration took place on March 9. Organizers estimated 200,000 protesters took to the streets to call for an end to Nuke 4. A later poll showed over 60 percent of the eligible voters in Taiwan support the Nuke 4 shutdown. There certainly is a chance that the Referendum Act may be amended as the Democratic Progressive Party wants. But the amendment will be unconstitutional. The country has to have absentee voting legislation if voters must be allowed to cast their absentee ballots in places of their temporary residence.
No absentee voting has been allowed in Taiwan simply because the Democratic Progressive Party has opposed it because it would be detrimental to its party interests. Its politicians are afraid absentee voting may doom them to permanent opposition. The Kuomintang government before the DPP takeover in 2000 was simply too lazy to have an absentee voting act passed, excusing itself by claiming that any voting outside polling stations is liable to be rigged.
But the time has come for the nation to have an absentee voting act. Proclivity to election rigging or complexity in vote counting can no longer be an excuse. Absentee voting can be postal, proxy or online. Even Thailand and the Philippines have absentee voting laws. Absentee voting in Hong Kong and Singapore was done through optical-scan voting in the last general elections in 2010. There is no reason why absentee voting cannot be done in Taiwan.
Would our politicians forget about their party interests just for once to adopt an absentee voting act as soon as practicable not to get more voters to turn out but to uphold their constitutional right of voting?
〈本文僅供參考，不代表本會立場〉
（本文刊載於102.03.18，The China Post）
胡思聰
(
2007年6月12日 09:50
)
林祖嘉
(
2018年4月17日 16:11
)
王順民
(
12月6日 16:45
)
張瑞雄
