First day recount: there are 6,000 "disputed votes"

Vote recount of China's Taiwan leaders election entered the second day and the whole recount process is generally stable. Meanwhile in many localities quite some voting irregularities and negligence were disclosed with some "disputed votes" discovered.

As learned these voting irregularities mainly include the discord of the number of distributed votes and the number of cast votes; flaw of ballot sealing; vote loss and the so-called "referendum vote" misplacing etc. The "disputed votes" focus on the determination of "valid votes" and "invalid votes".

Since the March 20 election results were released Nationalist Chairman Lien Chan and People First Party (PFP) Chairman Song Chuyu, as a party participating in the election, have believed that the election was unfair and full of doubts. They have, identifying the other participating party Chen Shuibian and Lu Xiulian as defendants, filed a "election results nullification" suit to the judicial department on the island and demanded a full recount. After the Taiwan judicial department accepted the lawsuit it ordered a full recount of the votes in the Taiwan leaders election. The recount is executed by local court on the island and lawyers from both sides take part in the recount. The recount is expected to finish by May 19. "Disputed votes" claimed during this period by lawyers from both sides cannot be released to the public, but instead they will be sealed up and left to the judicial department for final judgment.

Since the recount attracts the attention from across the island Kuomintang-PFP alliance and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) bloc as the parties concerned, disclosed various kinds of information through different channels after the first day recount. Kuomintang-PFP alliance believes since voting loss is more serious than expected this would only be the first step of the recount, and the results would have to be sent to the court for ruling before final recount results are reached and serve as evidence in the "nullification of being elected" suit and the "election nullification" suit. However, spokesperson for DPP lawyer panel said "I can see no sign that it will turn out 20,000 'disputed votes'. So it is impossible to overturn the results."

According to media on the island there are more than 16 million votes needed to be recounted. On the first day about 2.3-odd votes have been recounted across the island. The lawyers estimated in private that among them "about 6,000 votes are 'disputed'".

By People's Daily Online