5,000 military personnel unable to vote on election day: MND

Taipei, Dec. 27 (CNA) Taiwan's military has said that measures will be taken to ensure the nation's 210,000 military personnel can cast ballots in the Jan. 13, 2024 presidential and legislative elections except for 5,000 individuals who will remain on duty.

The 5,000 need to be on call to deal with potential emergencies, Captain Lee Chang-fu (李昌富), deputy head of the Ministry of National Defense's (MND) joint operations planning, told reporters at a news briefing Tuesday.

Lee said the number of servicepersons unable to cast ballots in the Jan. 13 elections will be about the same as during the nationwide local elections in November 2022.

According to the MND, the 5,000 are mostly personnel on active duty on warships on scheduled patrols, special forces detachments deployed in mountainous areas and offshore frontline islands, and technical units operating Taiwan's radar installations.

The number is also similar to the numbers who could not vote in the 2020 and 2016 presidential elections, and constitutes less than 3 percent of the total number of troops, MND data showed.

The number of military personnel required to remain on active duty on the day of a presidential election have dropped rapidly in the past two decades, falling from about 57,000 in the 2004 presidential election, to 10,500 in 2008, and 13,000 in 2012, MND data showed.

Taiwan does not have an absentee ballot mechanism, which would allow servicepersons on duty to vote.