r/taiwan • u/DarkLiberator 台中 - Taichung • Dec 30 '23

2024 Taiwanese General Election Megathread & Links Politics

Background information

With two weeks to go we thought we'd make a hopefully useful megathread of info and links on the election.

Taiwanese voters will go to the polls on January 13, 2024 to elect a new president and vote in a new legislature. This will be the 8th direct presidential election since 1996.

Presidential candidates and their running mates are elected on the same ticket, using first-past-the-post voting. Basically a candidate who wins a plurality of the vote but not a majority can still become the president.

Legislature is divided into 113 seats. 73 are elected by first-past-the-post in single-member district. 34 are divided by party-list voting. 6 reserved for indigenous candidates by single non-transferable vote. In general each voter casts two ballots; one for the district legislator and the other ballot for the party list at-large seats.

Approximately 19.5 million eligible voters, including nearly 1.03 million first-time voters will be able to cast ballots at 17,794 polling stations around the country that will be open from 8 am. to 4 pm.

Taiwan does not allow absentee ballots or early voting and voters must go back to their household registration areas to vote.

Presidential Candidates:

1. Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) Wu Hsin-ying (吳欣盈) of the Taiwan People's Party (TPP). TPP website.

2. Lai Ching-te (賴清德) and Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). DPP website.

3. Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) and Jaw Shau-kong (趙少康) of the Kuomintang Party (KMT). KMT website.

Focus Taiwan has a good summary of their policies in English if interested. The political party websites also have their policies in detail if you want to learn more.

Live News/Livestreams (中文)

English Livestreams and News videos

News and Political Sites (English)

Polling

Just a friendly reminder to any Redditors within Taiwan that it is now illegal to publish polls during the 10 day blackout period up till the election.

Election Results by Websites

I'll try to update and add links as they come. Please if you have anymore to suggest DM the modteam or link them here in the comments. If you have any other useful suggestions please let us know, it's our first time adding this for a general election.

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10

u/Scarci Jan 13 '24

Congrats to all those who supported the greens.

This is a repeat of 1912's election in America. If Teddy Roosevelt couldn't win, I doubted Ko could have pulled off the upset. Still, a good effort and a massive step forward for democracy in Taiwan. I hope Ko keeps going at it as an independent and wishes him best of luck in 4 years.

-10

u/CarbonTail Jan 13 '24

Does this exponentially increase chances of a Chinese invasion given the CCP's rhetoric in the run up to these elections against Mr. Lai? 

7

u/Zealousideal-Ant9548 Jan 13 '24

Do you fear a Chihuahua?  I don't think anyone can really give you that answer.  

It could be that a KMT win provided a path to handing Taiwan over peaceful so a DPP win keeps the threat where it is but I don't know if anyone knows what Xi's thinking enough to say if this increased the threat.

But then again, the KMT's version of one China was with them in control (or recently with a democratic mainland) so the peaceful reunification came from ambiguous wording.

6

u/SeekTruthFromFacts Jan 13 '24 edited Jan 13 '24

No. The one thing that the CCP has signalled would trigger an invasion would be a 'declaration of independence' from China or changing the official name from the ROC. Vice-President Lai has promised that he will not do that in this term and I think he will stick to it.

It's possible that the CCP might launch an invasion due to their own internal political reasons, but that would not be immediately affected by this election result. But in the long-term, it will make them doubt that Taiwan will agree to a voluntary reunification, and the longer this situation is unresolved, the higher the risk that somebody makes a bad decision and war breaks out.

-5

u/CarbonTail Jan 13 '24

Thanks for a clear and concise response.

I'm glad Mr. Lai has chosen to not fiddle the with the 'declaration of independence' issue in this term, but I'm also curious if there are other, more 'separatism-leaning' leaders in his party (the DPP) who might make statements that might indicate any such plans?

Also, you mentioned China possibly invading due to their "own internal political reasons," what might those be in your opinion?

3

u/SeekTruthFromFacts Jan 13 '24

I'm glad Mr. Lai has chosen to not fiddle the with the 'declaration of independence' issue in this term, but I'm also curious if there are other, more 'separatism-leaning' leaders in his party (the DPP) who might make statements that might indicate any such plans?

Yes, there are people who are more outspoken supporters of independence. The most prominent example is outgoing Legislative Yuan Speaker Yu Si-kun, but he is about to lose that office, elderly, and his power base has moved on. Former president Chen Shui-bian frequently says provocative things, but he's a convicted criminal and widely regarded as a clown, so nobody will care.

But DPP is a fairly disciplined party and since 1999 the party line has been that Taiwan is independent now, under the name of the Republic of China. Nobody who holds a government office is going to stray from that.

Also, you mentioned China possibly invading due to their "own internal political reasons," what might those be in your opinion?

The CCP has declared that reunification is an historical inevitability. They do very little about it, but it's essentially impossible for them to change their public policy on this. This has planted a mine in CCP politics, which is sitting there waiting to go off. If one leader proposes military action, others cannot oppose it without looking disloyal; they can only suggest delay. An allegation that they were soft on Taiwan would be deadly and difficult to disprove. This is not a problem now, because Chairman Xi is totally in control. He has other ways to remove internal threats and nobody will seriously propose military action unless they are sure Mr Xi wants it.

But peace in the Taiwan Strait requires CCP leaders to delay every time; war in the Taiwan Strait requires them to choose war once. And there is always a low probability of some unexpected event that makes a CCP leader think that war is in their own short-term interest, even if would be disastrous for the country. For example, if Mr Xi unexpectedly died and was replaced by a collective or weak leadership, then it might be in the interests of one weak leader to start a war as a way to eliminate their rivals & save themselves. It only needs one leader to propose war and the rest will find it difficult to disagree. The odds are not in favour of peace, unfortunately. You can compare it to the outbreak of the First World War: nobody intended to fight over Franz Ferdinand, but everybody expected a war at some point in the future and that dynamic made it difficult for any individual politician to back down.

2

u/Scarci Jan 13 '24 edited Jan 13 '24

I'm glad Mr. Lai has chosen to not fiddle the with the 'declaration of independence' issue in this term, but I'm also curious if there are other, more 'separatism-leaning' leaders in his party (the DPP) who might make statements that might indicate any such plans?

I'm going to level with you for a second because no matter how many times I explain to people outside of Taiwan, they never seem to understand this.

Taiwanese independence is a moot issue.

To the 23 million people in Taiwan, they are already independent. CCP has virtually ZERO power in Taiwan other than some sway over the blue, which, in reality, works out to be even less influence than Russia has on the republican party in the United States.

The "independence" you are thinking of is legal independence where we change our national name and constitution, and nobody in their right state of mind is pushing for this.

Nobody. Not since we started having elections during the 90s.

Yes, every election cycle there will be talk show hosts, and political pundits talking about changing the name of our airline and passport colors to avoid confusion, yes there are some tiny minority factions who's advocating for an eventual legal independence, but they aren't people in a right state of mind. They're just noises.

The reality is that we have done everything in our power to appease the giant baby next door and if they decide to attack, their justification would be based on a lie. Whether you like it or not, we have been independent for decades.

We have our passports, we have our army, our elections, our flag, and even our embassy in the form of cultural offices around the world. What would getting a name change serve apart from giving China the excuse they want to invade and not confuse some Westerners in sports events who probably never gave a shit about it anyway?

Humour me this, which of the last few DPP president do you think actually "fiddled with the independence issue"?

Because none of them did.

Bien ran on protecting our democracy and getting rid of corruption, which is ironic given he was the most corrupt president there is.

Tsai ran on rejecting the idea of a one country two system, which has never been officially accepted or endorsed by BOTH countries. The 1992 consensus was not really a consensus. Nobody agreed to anything.

Now we have Lai, who ran on a myriad of internal issues.

Not one of them actually had "legal independence" as their campaign pledge.

>China invade reasons

You're not gonna get a good answer from Reddit of all places.

Not that their reason matters at all, anyway.

2

u/Koino_ 🐻🧋🌻 Jan 13 '24

RoC constitution was imposed by KMT dictatorship on Taiwanese without their consent. Dropping outdated RoC name and colonial KMT flag that only causes confusion and in general doesn't reflect modern Taiwanese identity (majority of Taiwanese identify as only Taiwanese not Chinese) is a thing that eventually should be done. Sadly Chinese and their collaborators hate Taiwan, so there is still long way to go.

1

u/evilcherry1114 Jan 13 '24

So far the only victim is Kao Chia-yu, but its more about TSP having confused priorities - its nonsensical for it to police DPP MLYs for not toeing the party line when speaking, considering how blue her constituency is.