| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 公共行政暨政策學系 === 100 === In 2010, Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior proposed ideas for absentee voting and planned on using constituency voting as early as the 13th Presidential Election in 2012. As soon as the idea was announced, The Democratic Progressive Party, the largest opposition party in Taiwan, voiced strong concerns against it. Ultimately, due to the system’s various controversies and questions, as well as the combination of presidential and legislature elections, absentee voting was not put into practice. The author believes that while absentee voting was not used in 2012 due to numerous controversies, the goal of the idea was to preserve voting rights protected by the constitution. Since it is still a practical idea for the future, there is still intrinsic value in studying the idea.
In addition, the original controversies date back as far as to 1991, during the reelection of the National Assembly. Some of those controversies were brought to discussion in 2010, so it was apparent that they were not completely resolved and need to be discussed as part of the whole election system. Furthermore, more than 91 countries have already incorporated absentee voting. It is worth discussing whether Taiwan, as one of the most important democratic countries in Asia, is qualified to put absentee voting into practice. Between 2010 and 2011, the public has expressed great interest and started discussions on whether Taiwan should practice absentee voting. However, aside from political discussions, it is far more important to see whether it is feasible to incorporate the system, in both theory and practice. This thesis starts out from basic theories and then analyze whether this system is worth putting into practice.
The paper’s argument is in 3 parts. First, it introduces the voting process and discuss the process of absentee voting, including qualification, registration, responsible department, placement for voting booths, and the counting process. Second, the paper analyzes possible impact absentee voting may bring to Taiwan’s election system, such
as election bribery, get-out-the-vote, repeated ballot reception, and ghost candidates. Finally, the paper analyzes key arguments that arose between 2010 and 2011, including the eligibility of soldiers and businesspeople working in mainland China. The eligibility of soldiers have always been a controversial issue while the political stance of businesspeople in mainland China are questioned due to the hostile relationship between China and Taiwan.
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