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Vote buyers focusing
on smaller districts
By Wu Ching-chin 吳景欽
The elections are over, but the problem of vote buying is still with us and has
not diminished by any discernible amount.
The problem has only been exacerbated by the single-member district electoral
system, which has now been used for two elections and under which vote buying
appears to be particularly rampant.
Article 4 of the Additional Articles to the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution
was revised in June 2005 to address changes in the voting system.
Not only was the single term for legislators extended to four years, but a new
“single-member district, two vote” system was adopted to limit the number of
representatives elected by allowing only one seat per constituency.
It was also hoped that this measure would help curb vote buying.
From what we have seen in the two most recent elections, such hopes have been in
vain.
One of the main reasons for this was that the Additional Articles stipulates
that, of the 113 legislators, only 73 are elected from the constituencies. If
these seats are divided among the entire electorate, that would mean each
constituency has something like 310,000 voters.
Supposing voter turnout is more than 80 percent, that means a candidate would
have a good chance of winning by controlling, say, 100,000 votes. Now, it would
take quite some resources to secure these through vote buying.
The problem is, even though it is true that the cost is much higher than it was
under the previous system, it might not be high enough to prevent vote buying
altogether, especially when a given constituency is considered to be of
sufficiently high importance to a political party that already enjoys
considerable clout in the legislature, and given that there is now a reduced
number of constituency seats available.
This problem is even more apparent in cities or counties with a relatively small
population, because the first clause of Article 4 of the Additional Articles
states that at least one member shall be elected from each county and city.
Places like Kinmen, Matsu, Hualien, Taitung, Penghu and Chiayi are still
allocated a seat even though their populations fall short of the size stipulated
above. While it is true that this promotes regional balance, it also violates
the principle that each vote shall carry equal weight.
Vote buying is even more difficult to prevent in constituencies with low
populations, where the phenomenon of the “phantom population” (people who take
up residence in an area four months before the election date for the sole
purpose of being eligible to vote) is easier to engineer.
With the shift to the single-member system as required in the Additional
Articles and, as clause 3 of Article 35 of the Civil Servants Election and
Recall Act (公職人員選罷法) states that the division of the constituencies can only be
reviewed every 10 years, things are unlikely to change in the short term,
especially with the governing party holding a majority in the legislature.
All we can do is rely on prosecutors to pursue vote buying, although it would be
unwise to hold out too much hope for this.
In the end, it is going to come down to the wisdom of the public, because if a
given number of people are still willing to take bribes in return for their
votes, we do not stand a chance of curbing this practice, no matter how many
revisions to the law are made, or how heavy the punishments for transgressors
are.
Wu Ching-chin is an assistant professor in the Department of Financial and
Economic Law at Aletheia University.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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