Two nationwide elections are drawing near, but nobody seems to care about absentee voting.As a matter of fact, the next legislative elections are a little more than eight months away, but the Central Election Commission, founded under the Executive Yuan in 1980, seems oblivious to the fact that Taiwan is one of a few democracies where the electorate cannot fully exercise their absentee voting right.The other election, that of the president, follows in a little more than three months.
South Koreans and Malaysians, our next door neighbors, enjoy that public right of political participation.But the Central Election Commission – which is responsible for holding and supervising national and local elections, screening candidate qualifications, recalling elected officials, and drafting or amending laws concerning elections – only allows our citizens resident abroad to come back to Taiwan to cast their ballots in person.That is unfair to close to one million Taiwan businessmen and their dependents in China and those living elsewhere in the rest of the world.Foreign service personnel stationed overseas are also required to come home in Taiwan and vote.That is not just ridiculous, but unconstitutional as well.
A couple of very lame excuses have been offered for not giving our citizens out of country the right to vote like the Americans or our neighbors.The Central Election Commission used to say absentee voting can be easily, or more easily, rigged than the voting in person, one reason being the difficulty in setting up polling stations abroad.But that’s spurious, because absentees can be made to vote by mail.Election officials have no confidence in the honest postal service.As a matter of fact, at least one postman was found to have switched his bagful of votes in a local election a couple of decades ago.And in the final analysis, elections can be rigged either voters cast their ballots in person or by mail.
The evident reason why Taiwan fails to have its citizens abroad to vote as absentees is the laziness on the part of the Central Election Commission.It doesn’t want to plan, draw up and enforce an act on absentee voting.The ruling Democratic Progressive Party does not want to have such an act passed, because they know most of the million voters in China, if allowed to vote in absentia, would vote for the opposition.And the ruling party has a good alibi.It and the opposition are now at loggerheads over the organic law of the commission.Who knows how long it’s going to take to amend the law, which is expected to usher in a new commission that has to tackle the constituency arrangements for the forthcoming parliamentary elections.
Isn’t it possible that the opposition may request the Council of Grand Justices for a ruling on the constitutionality of the election law sans absentee voting provisions?In all likelihood, our grand justices will rule the current practice unconstitutional and order the Central Election Commission to allow our eligible voters abroad to vote in the presidential election without coming back to Taiwan.
（本文刊載於96.03.15 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）
