Legislature approves return of referendums on national election days

Taipei, Nov. 21 (CNA) The Legislative Yuan on Friday passed an opposition-backed amendment that restores a practice for a referendum to be held on a national election day if one occurs during the period in which the referendum must take place.

Under the amended Article 23 of the Referendum Act, a referendum vote must be scheduled for between three and six months after a proposal is approved and held in tandem with a national election day if one falls within that period.

The amendment was supported by lawmakers from the Kuomintang (KMT) and the smaller Taiwan People's Party (TPP), which hold a combined majority in the Legislature.

After the vote, TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said the amendment would serve to break free from the "birdcage Referendum Act," a metaphor commonly used to describe the law's unusually high thresholds for a referendum to be valid, based on the idea that holding a referendum on an election day would boost turnout.

However, Chen Pei-yu (陳培瑜), a DPP caucus whip, slammed the KMT and the TPP for "tampering with the Referendum Act," adding that the DPP opposed their proposal in order to uphold the result of the 2021 referendum.

The DPP, which passed a similar amendment in 2017 when it controlled the Legislature, approved another revision in 2019 that decoupled referendums from national elections.

In 2021, a KMT-initiated referendum seeking to restore the 2017 practice failed to meet the legal thresholds, as "Yes" votes accounted for just 19.93 percent of eligible voters -- below the required 25 percent -- while "No" votes outnumbered "Yes" votes.

The current Referendum Act stipulates that referendums are scheduled for the fourth Saturday of August and are held every two years, effective since 2021.

DPP Legislator Wu Ping-jui (吳秉叡) said the party's move in 2019 was in response to the chaos of the local elections in 2018, where the concurrent voting on 10 referendums and nine categories of local public offices led to long queues and the highly questionable situation of vote counting starting before all voting was completed.

It made no sense for the KMT and TPP to disregard the 2021 referendum results, Wu said. "If this leads to chaos in elections, will the opposition parties be held accountable?"

In a Facebook post, the TPP's Huang lashed out at the DPP for "double standards," citing as an example the DPP government's scheduling of the referendum on lowering the voting age from 20 to 18 to coincide with local elections in 2022.

In response, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said it would conduct voting in accordance with the law and ensure that election operations remain stable and smooth.