Registration has begun for Taiwan’s 9-in-1 elections which will take place on November 29. This year’s elections are the most encompassing elections in Taiwan’s history.
The nine types of offices that Taiwanese will elect people for are city mayors, city councilors, county mayors, county councilors, township mayors, township representatives, aboriginal representatives and district chiefs, and village chiefs. Over 20,000 are expected to run for 11,130 positions.
The Central Election Commission (CEC) said the most challenging aspect of the elections will be the number of votes to be calculated. There will be over 15,600 voting booths that require over 20,000 personnel to operate that day.
CEC official Liu Yi-zhou describes some of the operations behind the 9-in-1 elections. "The 9-in-1 elections mean more work," Liu said. "Some places will have as many as 5 ballots while some will have only 3. We will allow the places with a lot of ballots to operate at their discretion and perhaps have two groups of people counting the votes."
At least half of the voting booth personnel need to be government employees. But Liu said since the hours are long and the pay is low, it’s hard to find people to help. Liu said he hopes they can amend the law to enable retired government employees to help at the voting booths as well.