December 11, 2004 was a beautiful, sunny Saturday in Taiwan, a prefect day for elections. Voters went to the polls to elect the 225 legislators of the Legislative Yuan, the highest legislative body in the land. To control the Yuan a party or coalition needed a minimum of 113 legislative seats.

Despite the beautiful day, the voter turnout was a disappointing 59%; 9.7 million votes were cast out of 16.5 million eligible voters. This low turnout was particularly surprising since less than nine months previous on a worse day, 12.9 million votes (80%) were cast out of approximately 16.3 million eligible voters for the March 20th presidential elections. Even three years previous in the 2001 Legislative Elections with a lower base of eligible voters, 10.3 million votes were cast. Where did the votes go?

Blame it on the weather, no! Blame it on a lack of issues, no, the stakes were high--control of the Legislative Yuan. What happened? Where did all the voters go? 6.8 million people did not vote.

First the results, at the end of the day, the blue coalition made up of the Kuomintang (KMT), the People's First Party (PFP) and the New Party (NP) had gained a majority with 114 seats. The green coalition made up of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) controlled 101 seats and independents had 10. It was a clear blue victory and they as the opposition party maintained control of the Legislative Yuan. This is how the breakdown came by party.

Party	2001	2004	Gain/Loss
DPP	87	89	+2
KMT	68	80	+12
PFP	46	34	-12
TSU	13	12	-1
New Party	1	1	0
Others	10	9	-1

Winners and Losers

For Lien Chan and the KMT there was a sense of victory. They gained 12 seats. This was particularly face-saving for Lien since his past track record with the party was a series of one defeat after another. In the 2000 presidential elections he placed a dismal third, in the 2001 legislative elections his party lost 55 seats and in the 2004 presidential election despite teaming up with James Soong the two together lost by a narrow margin.

This victory was sweet in a particular way for Lien. He had also defeated his old nemesis James Soong. Though the KMT and the PFP have an alliance, Soong by breaking ranks and running against Lien in 2000 had cost him the presidential election. After that election Soong formed the PFP.

The KMT however cannot take their gain of 12 seats as a mandate for much; their votes and seats came at the expense of the PFP and not the DPP. Their gain was a matter of robbing Peter to pay Paul as far as the blue coalition went. Internally the KMT however did put the PFP in its place. Further they have the satisfaction that the blues did not lose their previous majority in the Legislative Yuan. This was at a time when many predicted the green party would gain a majority.

The DPP gained two seats; this is not much but it is still a gain. In 2001 they won 87 seats with approximately 3.44 million votes; in 2004, they won 89 with slightly more votes (3.47 million). The green tide did not make the large gains it made in 1998 (16 seats) and 2001 (17 seats) but it is still rising. Their only regret is that they expected to do much better.

James Soong and his PFP party were the big losers. In losing 12 seats Soong's party not only lost seats but also has ventured toward a downward slope. They may follow the disappearing NP which had 21 seats in 1995, 11 in 1998 and 1 thereafter. The PFP's loss was at the gain of the KMT, which used a slash and burn method in voter allocation to defend their seats, and rarely shared votes with the PFP.

Soong's clout is dwindling but his party is still needed to give the blues a majority and he can still be a player. He clearly knows where he stands with the KMT and he has two choices. He can fall into line with the KMT and eat humble pie-something that would be extremely difficult for him or he can threaten to and/or wheel and deal with the greens. A Chinese saying states "No friend is a friend for life; no enemy is an enemy for life." As Provincial Governor after all, Soong had gone out of his way to learn Taiwanese.

The Taiwan Solidarity Union lost one seat in the elections. They were the party that had expected to do better and set their sights on 20 seats. However they put forward too many candidates (30) and did not use the voter allocation system wisely. Part of the green camp strategy depended on the TSU winning more though in some places they were in direct competition with DPP candidates. The TSU did increase in actual voter numbers; unfortunately for them they did not know how to contact this increasing base. If they had won an additional 3 or 4 seats, no party would have the needed majority.

Those Familiar Faces

An election would not be complete without those familiar faces in Taiwan politics. Li Ao entered and barely won a seat in the legislature. Running in a district where ten legislators were chosen out of 30 candidates, he got the tenth place. Li Ao is the Don Rickles of Taiwan politics. He makes his living off of being cynical, criticizing people and talking nonsense. He can be amusing if he is lambasting your enemies; but annoying if he attacks your friends. In either case, like those who trade solely on wit and criticism, he soon wears thin. Unfortunately the Taiwan media caters to such superficiality so we will be seeing more of him.

Diane Lee, the vitriolic harpy of jaundiced justice, hung on for a victory in her district so we will surely hear more of her rantings. She ran as PFP but her talk of jumping ship to the KMT after the March elections may have kept her from being one of the PFP's sacrificial victims claimed by the KMT.

Then there was Hsu Hsin-liang. Again he joined the ranks of losers. Will this perennial dreamer finally bow out? Would we be so lucky? Not on your life. As a man who has never had a real job in a real world, he probably wouldn't know what to do. Hsu is one of those people who can be hit on the head with a crowbar and still not get the message. In 2000, he had run for president of the country and received less than 80,000 votes out of 12 million plus votes cast. This time he ran in a district where he only needed a mere 34,000 votes to win. He placed so low that the newspapers mercifully did not even print his results. No doubt he still dreams of being the one Chinese hero who will unite all; he will probably make another trip to China to show the press that he talks with "high officials." Perhaps he should change his name to Ah-Q.

Shen Fu-hsiung was another loser. This DPP regular made the mistake of trying to keep a foot in each of two boats and placate both greens and blues. Such a strategy might work if one were in a different vote system, But where there is a "single-vote, multiple member" election system it does not work. As of late, the limelight may have blinded Shen. In his remarks he aimed at being clever and not substantial. At any rate, he alienated too many DPP voters that cost him his party vote allocation and did not pick up any blue votes, which were sparingly distributed.

Missing Votes, the Real Issue

The real question however is where did all the voters go? There were 3.7 million votes less cast than had been cast just nine months previous. Add that to the total list of eligible voters and you realize that over 6 million voters failed to vote. 6 million is substantial; all the more substantial when you realize that in any of the 168 seats in 29 districts, any candidate could have won outright with a bare minimum of thirty to forty-two thousand votes.

The reason that one could win with so little is due to the "single-vote, multiple member" district system that is used for legislative elections. For example in a sample Taipei District there were thirty candidates from all parties running for ten seats. Each voter in that district can only vote once for one of the thirty candidates. When the voting is finished, the ten candidates with the most votes are selected as legislators. Is it fair? That is definitely debatable and the reason why this system is being done away with. In many of the races, the difference between the last person selected and the person immediately under him/her was only a matter of 300 to 2000 votes.

Faced with such figures, one realizes that if any of the parties had just mobilized 100,000 more voters out of the 6 million that didn't vote, that party could have taken many more seats. It also raises the question why no parties could mobilize even that small amount. Perhaps the people are more discriminating than we give them credit for; or more to the point there is a much larger "uncommitted" group out there than was imagined.

To cope with this unusual system, the parties have turned to voter allocation. If a candidate who gets 30,000 votes has an equal seat as a popular candidate who gets 300,000 votes (both being in the top ten), the parties realize that they are better off spreading the excess votes of the popular candidate around to others. (One common way is to use the last digit on the voter's ID card to determine which assigned party candidate the person should vote for.) In this way the lesser-qualified candidates can still make the minimum cut-off point. There is of course the risk that the popular candidate may share too many votes and also be cut out as did happen this time.

In this particular election, the KMT did a better job in getting their people to spread their votes and in not having an excessive number of candidates. That explains their victory, but it does not explain the voter apathy. The greens had 2.4 million votes less than they got in the March elections. The blues had about 1.9 million less. Some of these votes had gone to the independents but the majority did not show up. Why?

Pundits give various reasons such as people being sure their party would win without them, or people getting tired of the rhetoric but in my mind the greater reason for the poor turnout is the system. The "single-vote, multiple member" system psychologically disenfranchises the voter.

First, the voter realizes that with each having only one vote, any candidate can win with a minimum amount of votes especially if many potential candidates flood a district and spread out the vote count. Depending on the district, the required votes to be guaranteed a seat ranged from 2,130 to 41,700; such a small number could easily be bought or hustled. The ease with which gangsters and the wealthy are elected legislators is embarrassing.

On the other hand, if you vote for the candidate the party assigns to you, then you may end up voting for a candidate you feel is totally unqualified. (There were plenty in this election.) The whole purpose of the choice you have in a democracy is defeated. To vote for the person that the party tells you to is equivalent to voting blindly or voting for a bribe.

Voters soon feel their votes have nothing to do with their judgment or of the worth of the candidates. The voters have little control over the system and little confidence in it. Even if you vote your conscience, you have only one vote for one candidate. If your party has several good candidates you can still only vote for one. You realize that if the other party follows a strict allocation system they may vote in lesser candidates than any good candidates you could not vote for. There are many ways your vote can be nullified.

What is particularly disturbing though few have commented on it is that we have here the highest legislative body in the country; yet anyone can become a legislator by getting a mere thirty to forty thousand votes. Li Ao openly stated in his platform, "I like to complain, if you want someone to complain for you regardless of its value, elect me." He received 33,922 votes enough to give him a seat in the Legislative Yuan.

Farcical and sad as it is, this is why the legislature attracts so many grandstanders, showboats, and even criminals. Once you get a seat, you have full TV coverage by a media that caters to sensationalism not substance. It is also why we have fistfights, food fights, water fights, you name it, in the highest legislative body in the land.

In any given district, there are always good candidates elected but there are also enough idiots who can attract the minimum 30,000 votes or so to get a legislative seat.

It is no wonder then that the average voter, armed with only one vote in a district that selects as many as nine, ten, even up to thirteen seats from a morass of thirty to forty candidates will suffer malaise, feel helpless and find something else to do on election day.

The next voting session (three years from now) will be different however; the "one vote, multiple member" system is gone. It is a turn for the better. Legislators will be judged more on their merits. Hopefully parties will give more thought to their nominees and hopefully more voters will exercise their right of choice.

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This is # 16 in a series of comments and observations on Taiwan’s Politics and the 2004 Presidential Elections. Future articles include “A Tale of Four Parties,” “The KMT—What Happens when Good Men are Silent,” and eventually “A Pro-offered Solution to the Two China Issue.” Readers can share these comments with friends and interested parties. Copyright: Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D. an author, technology transfer manager and educator who has lived in Taiwan for 16 years is co-author of the book Island in the Stream, a Quick Case Study of Taiwan’s Complex History. Additional writings of his can be found on this Web site.