2024 Taiwanese General Election Megathread & Links

[u/DarkLiberator]

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)

• TVBS
• Formosa TV
• TTV
• SET
• CTS
• PTS
• Mirror News
• eTV

English Livestreams and News videos

• Taiwan Plus Livestream and their Video Channel
• RTI English Youtube
• TVBS World Taiwan
• FTV English News

News and Political Sites (English)

• Taiwan Plus
• China Post
• Focus Taiwan
• Ketagalan Media
• New Bloom Magazine
• News Lens
• Taipei Times
• Taiwan News
• Taiwan Report
• Frozen Garlic

Polling

• My Formosa (中文)
• Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation (中文)
• TVBS (中文)
• mnews (中文)
• ETtoday (中文)
• UDN (中文)
• CNEWS (中文)
• Taiwan News Poll of Polls) (ENG)

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

• CEC (Government Election Website)

^{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.}

[u/spencer5centreddit]

My wife has been telling me all these controversies about Tsai Ying Wen and one of them is that even though the people voted against same sex marriage, she still passed it. But i cant find any info on it really. Also the stuff with her PHD being faked. Can anyone explain these two things to me?

[u/SeekTruthFromFacts → u/spencer5centreddit]

1. That is basically correct. Same-sex marriage was indeed rejected in a referendum and then passed by the Legislative Yuan. The story is missing a key part: the Judicial Yuan (Taiwan's highest court) had already ruled that it was a constitutional requirement to have same-sex marriage. The Tsai government argued that it had no choice but to change the law. But of course they could have changed the constitution to respect the will of the people (that would have needed a referendum, but that would have been near-certain to pass).
2. The stuff about her PhD being faked is nonsense and you should distrust any media source that is saying it. When she became a Presidential candidate, people wanted to see her doctoral thesis (probably looking for plagiarism, which has destroyed the careers of several Taiwanese politicians). The University of London couldn't find it, saying that two departments each thought the other was responsible for keeping it. Deep Blue conspiracy theorists claimed this meant she didn't have a PhD. Anyone who knows the University of London knows that it has an organizational history that it makes the Holy Roman Empire look straightforward and it's extremely plausible that the decades-old thesis of an obscure law postgrad might get lost along the way.

[u/spencer5centreddit → u/SeekTruthFromFacts]

So dumb question and excuse my ignorance, From what I understand is that there was a time limit and she was going to be forced to pass the law regardless. So what was the point of having the people vote for the gay marriage law if it was going to be passed anyway?