Taipei, Jan. 29 (CNA) A recount of ballots has shown that Chen Shei-saint (陳學聖) of the Kuomintang (KMT) maintained his lead against his main rival and won a hotly contested electoral district in Taoyuan City in the Jan. 16 legislative elections, the Taoyuan District Court said Friday.

The court and lawyers representing Chen and his rival Hsu Ching-wen (徐景文) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) completed the recount of votes from 25 ballot boxes at noon.

The Central Election Commission announced after the election that Chen won by 77,510 votes against Hsu's 77,120 votes. Due to the close margin, Hsu applied for a recount.

The recount showed one less vote for Chen and resulted in the gap between the two narrowing to 389 votes.

Hsu only chose 25 out of 174 ballot boxes for the recount which he deemed to have too large of a discrepancy in votes.

This was a second recount since the Jan. 16 legislative elections, but the results have not showed any dramatic turnaround.

The first recount, also in Taoyuan City, has showed that Kuomintang legislator Yang Li-huan (楊麗環) lost to her DPP opponent Cheng Pao-ching(鄭寶清), in the fourth electoral district of the city.

The recount, however, cut the gap between the two from 169 votes to 160 votes.

Under the legislative Election and Recall Law, the loser is eligible to apply for a recount if the margin falls within 0.3 percent of the vote.

(By Chiu Chun-chin and Lilian Wu)
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