Taipei mayor retains post following vote recount

Taipei, Dec. 13 (CNA) Incumbent Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has retained his mayoral post, following a vote recount requested by the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) candidate, the Taipei District Court said Thursday.

The initial result of the recount by the court shows that Ko grabbed 580,663 votes, ahead of the KMT's Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) with 577,096, a difference of 3,567 ballots in the close-run race.

Ting requested the recount the day after the Nov. 24 Taipei mayoral election, in which Ko won re-election by a razor-thin margin of just 0.23 percent.

According to Taiwan's election laws, if the margin between the two candidates with the highest votes falls below 0.3 percent, a recount can be demanded by the losing candidate.