The US prides itself on its democratic elections. A system where “anyone” can run and the population feels represented in the government. Growing up, you only read how the US helped revolutionized the democratic structure in our own government. How the US stands above other countries in their attempt for an equal and fair ruling body. However, after witnessing the election process in Taiwan I am not as prideful of our own system back home.
For one there is a limit to when a sitting president may begin to campaign while still in office. Other candidates also don’t start multiple years before the actual election. In the US it’s almost as if we let the dust settle after the new president is vowed in only to start discussing who their successor will be in the upcoming election a month after the fact. There is no time to just focus on achieving their goals in office. Politicians are always weighing decisions based on reelection rather than helping the people, their actual job. Like the US, Taiwan also has two leading parties, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP or the Green team) and the Kuomingtang (KMT or the Blue team). There is another larger party known as the People First Party, PFP, however, similar to the US the PFP seems to only find success in the smaller elections. The platforms of the parties are unlike ours. My understanding of the Democratic Progressive Party is that they want autonomy from China, large military spending, and are more conservative in their financial endeavors. The KMT, on the other hand, were fighting for a closer relationship with China to aid Taiwan’s economy and an increase in spending to reverse the DPP decision to limit and cut teacher’s retirement sums, a hot topic in my school. – The nurse supported the DPP, while the other teachers that were more vocal supported the KMT due to the cut of the teacher’s retirement fund. Interesting enough, the nurse is not included as a teacher and therefore, here own retirement was not impacted by the DPP altering the retirement process to make it more manageable for the government.
Being in Taiwan it’s both easy to not know anything about the election, but also know a lot about the candidates just by listening. The Taiwanese population in rural areas, as that is all I can attest to, don’t talk about politics openly. It wasn’t until I actually begin a conversation with my teachers that they began to talk about candidates, who they thought would win, and each candidates’ platforms. I had to go digging to better understand the process as the News outlets would routinely only show the two candidates on TV with stories that moved too fast for me to understand. I didn’t know the platforms or how the process worked, but the entire roadsides were taken up by large posters of each candidates’ face. It was hard to escape and yet, there were no sarcastic representation of either candidate like a Saturday Night Live episode, no Halloween masks depicting each candidate’s most notable features. It was a civilized fight. Albeit without the photoshopped head of the KMT candidate, Han Kuo-yu, on Marvel superheroes that seemed to pop up in Taipei and I was unable to get a picture despite how hard I tried to find them myself.
Back to the actual process…
Seeing as one of the main issues being voted on during this election was the relationship between Taiwan and China, the idea of electoral fraud as the US has encountered is not a far-off idea. China would probably gladly rig the election to get Taiwan back as their island, whereas the younger population of Taiwan identify not as a province of China. No countries, not even one of Taiwan’s biggest allies, the US, will identify Taiwan as a country and instead it lives in limbo. To combat the possibility of voter fraud, Taiwan has a very interesting system. No computers, less chances of fraud. The entire process is completed on a Saturday, i.e. this past Saturday, to enable all people to be able to vote. It is uncommon not to vote in elections unlike the US where people routinely choose not to voice their opinion. The main difference though that surprised me the most is that the entire process for every governmental level is done on paper ballots. You must bring the paper ballot mailed to your house with you to the polling stations, all schools, as well as your government ID.
The ballots are a whole different thing. The different government offices each are a different color, pink for president, and yellow and green for local and the congress level (which I don’t really know the name of here or how that branch works at all so I won’t pretend to). The ballot then has the name of each candidate, the party, the picture of the candidate, as well as the name of the candidate in Braille. Taiwan covers all their bases in terms of allowing the ballot to be understood by people of multiple levels of education, reducing confusion. The voter then checks, writes, or stamps under the candidate they would like to vote for in a square. Forget computerized ballots and mailed in ballots that never get counted, Taiwan is able to count paper ballots in 3 hours for their entire population- 23.78 million people in this organized process.
Once each ballot is completed, they are slipped into a white box. Now the white box looks just like any other cardboard box with the name of whatever level of the election that box is for. However, these boxes are their own form of election transparency. On national television, Taipei films the boxes empty, being closed, and then and only then being wrapped with a ribbon seal preventing them from being opened. These boxes are then sent across the island and inspected in each site before voting begins by multiple Taipei officials who go to each polling site to make sure the process is fair and runs smoothly.
That’s another difference from Taiwan and the US. Now, I am in rural Taiwan so there isn’t many threats, so maybe Taipei voting was different, but there was one security guard and one representative from Taipei. The security guard didn’t even have a gun and looked like I could outrun him in a chase. If this was in the US, I think I would’ve expected at least more security maybe a camera or two outside, at least an armed guard or just another guard as well. Taiwan has a trust in their system and a trust in their people as they all buy into the fairness of the election. I found myself jealous as they voted knowing that the entire process is done in complete view of the population with no room for mistake or fraud.
Sorry for tangent, anyways, in order to be able to collect and calculate all the ballots in 3 hours, Taiwan is split into small communities for voting to make it more manageable. You must therefore, vote in the location of your government ID. If you have moved recently or you didn’t change your ID yet, you are then expected to return home to wherever your ID is from. The trains were packed the day leading up to the election, as Sean can attest to having had to stand for 6 hours on a train being unable to get a sitting ticket, and teachers left school early to travel across the island. Coffeeshop closed and restaurants to enable people to vote. All the polling sites are schools, the largest school in each voting district. For my town it was the elementary school which wasn’t hard to assume because it is pretty much the equivalent of two blocks back home taken up by the largest buildings, courtyard, pool, track, and anything else the students might need (and no I am not jealous that 關山國小has so many more resources than my own school -why would you even assume that).
Along with the guard and representative of Taipei at each voting site, the rest of the crew is made up of the most honorable people in that community…. Typically teachers. Teachers, doctors, and other notable people in society that are given the opportunity to oversee the process. It is not only a great honor to be chosen to help with the election, but some people become teachers just to be able to help in the future. It’s not even just a teacher, but someone who has been a teacher for a long time and has experience, they or should I say we are honorable members of society through taking our time to help the younger generations. Interesting to see that the occupation we don’t pay well is viewed as highly as educated doctors in this society.
These teachers are at the polling place all day. My understanding that voting started early and they began to count the votes in Guanshan around 4 o’clock that evening. This was the most interesting part of the process to watch, the reading of the votes. It takes five people each with a different job. After ceremonially opening the box for the first time, breaking the seal in front of the public, one person reaches in and begins to make a pile of ballots, around 30 ballots. Another teacher will then take those ballots one by one and hold it up with their back facing the people watching in order for the people watching, the person gathering the ballots, and the reader to all see the ballot as they announce “1 vote for X candidate.” Another person then runs back and forth amongst the different paper lists to put a dash under the name of the candidate that was called. The audience, the ballot reader, and two more people at the table next to them all watch the person writing the votes on the board to check his work. Then the ballot that has been read is set on the table amongst the rest of the ballots read for that candidate. As soon as the current sheet of paper is filled with dashes, another is added on top to begin again. The most influential aspect of the election process is that the “audience” the community is also there to observe the process. They add another check to prove there was no fraud involved, check the math, and hold the teachers to a high degree of trust. It truly is an election for the people, by the people.
For ballots that are unclear, a third person, and final judge is called over. The ballot is shown to the crowd and she makes the final call as to if the mark is indiscernible or if it can be counted for a candidate, and to which candidate to give it to. This typically happens when the stamp or signature is haphazardly put between boxes. In the entire process, we only saw one ballot need the woman’s judgement to determine the vote, all the other ballots were clear.
Once all the ballots are read, the now empty box is shown to the audience to show that it is no empty. It is then set in the center of the room along with the other empty boxes of the other offices, but the box always remains open on its side to prove the rest of the day that it is empty and there is nothing to hide. Once the numbers are double-checked, the bulletin board with the tallies is moved outside of the counting area for the audience then to look, check themselves, take pictures of, and call their party representatives.
Officially, the numbers are called into Taipei in front of everyone. As the election gets called in your area you can hear firecrackers in the distance go off. There was firecrackers the entire process, it’s a competition between the parties. If the blue party sets off 4 firecrackers, the green party will then set off 5 firecrackers and go back and forth. Once the election is called, that party will literally seem to set off the rest of whatever firecrackers they have left to celebrate.
Sean came to visit just to see this process, to see a small community come together while voting. We got some weird looks from the other audience members when we walked in although we probably deserved it. Why would foreigners want to see something as monotonous as hours of people reading ballots, let alone come here with a camera or in Sean’s instance a bag of grapes to snack on? We explained the differences between both our election and theirs in a combination of Chinese and English. It was interesting to hear some of the voters’ excitement when we were comparing the two and our own views on their process.
In the end, Tsai ing-wen, the current president, won in an overall majority. Although she didn’t win the majority in Taitung county, where I am from, she was a lot closer than most had expected. The final tally in Guanshan was 295 for the KMT and 271 for the DPP. It really never should’ve been that close. The aboriginal groups don’t fully support the DPP due to past treatment of the indigenous groups of Taiwan and the population usually being older people who felt the lose financially as a result of China limiting tourism in the area. Regardless, Taiwan will remain independent from China on most counts. It will be interesting to see how China reacts to the election in the coming days. Last election with Tsai was originally elected, China limited all business with Taiwan and required all Chinese tourists to only go on country sanctioned tours, decreasing all sales from tourism across the island. On the other hand, China actually helped Tsai ing-wen win the election. This time last year she was only polling 15%. It was only when Hong Kong’s protests against China became widely publicized that her support started to increase exponentially. So without meaning to, China helped the candidate they worked to replace.
China can’t be happy with this outcome because the longer before their idea of “reunification” the more young people reach voting age, and the farther the population moves away from identifying as Chinese and towards becoming Taiwanese. That change has occurred. When I was interviewing the people at both gay pride events in Taiwan, not a single person answered Chinese. Instead, all the interview subjects decided to identify as Taiwanese.
America could learn a thing or two from Taiwan.
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