Presidential and Legislative Elections, 13 January 2024

On 13 January 2024, Taiwan held the regularly scheduled presidential and legislative elections following the two-term rule of the previous president. In Taiwan, the president is directly elected by a majority vote for a four-year term with a maximum of two terms. For the unicameral legislature, called the Legislative Yuan, voters cast one ballot for their district and one ballot for at-large seats, returning a total of 113 legislators who serve four-year terms (Taiwan.gov n.d.). 

The electoral management body of Taiwan is the Central Election Commission (CEC). The CEC is made up of nine commissioners serving four-year terms, nominated by the CEC and appointed by the Premier—the leader of the Executive Yuan—or executive branch. The total number of commissioners belonging to a political party cannot surpass one-third of nine and are not subject to party control (CEC n.d.a). 

While evidence of Chinese interference in the electoral climate was observed in a number of ways, for example, military drills and changes to economic tariffs, disinformation (attempting to sway public opinion against the incumbent party) was especially prominent (Yu, Clark and Shahi 2024). This included fake polls on the opposition party taking the lead, Facebook accounts claiming poisoned pork was being imported from the US, and that certain candidates held US citizenship and were therefore not eligible to run for office (Lau 2024). While there was disinformation throughout the 2020 election cycle attacking specific candidates and alleging vote-rigging, the run-up to 2024 saw stronger narratives targeting US relations and future conflict (Dutcher 2024). The CEC held a news conference to refute false claims about electoral discrepancies and were assisted in this by dozens of independent fact-checkers. Taiwan has many dedicated fact-checking civil society groups, such as MyGoPen and Taiwan FactCheck Center (Klepper and Wu 2024).

Substantial espionage and disinformation attacks on Taiwan’s critical cyber infrastructure took place in the days before polls opened (Miller and Gedeon 2024). However, given that Taiwan votes on paper ballots, there were limited concerns of cyber-attacks on election day.

Rights of women, indigenous, immigrants, and persons with disabilities have protection through accessibility arrangements during elections and democratic representation. For Legislative elections, half of a party’s candidates must be female and there is a minimum number of representative seats reserved for indigenous people. Taiwan has a history of electing female leaders to senior positions, including as president and Vice president, yet there were nevertheless several instances of misogynistic rhetoric during the election cycle (Yip 2024). This time, the legislative election set an impressive record for women's representation, with 47 women elected to the 113-member legislature, making up 41.59% of the seats. Taiwan also elected its second female vice president (Tapei Times 2024).

There are no provisions for early, absentee, mobile or electronic voting in Taiwan, resulting in some citizens flying back from abroad to participate in the election (Qin 2024). Regarding campaign financing, the Political Donations Act of 2004 regulates the total amount of donations given by an individual, association, or business (Formosa 2022).

On election day, there were no electoral disputes or incidents of violence, logistical errors or delays in vote counting (Zhou 2024). Joint election monitors Liberal International (LI) and the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats (CALD) noted that Taiwan’s democracy is resilient and that the elections followed a peaceful and orderly process (LI 2024). Some observers applauded the CEC’s process of paper ballots only, read aloud and displayed to others for accuracy, to assist in keeping the process transparent (FocusTaiwan 2024; CEC n.d.c). 

The incumbent party candidate, Lai Ching-te won a third consecutive presidential victory for the Democratic Progressive Party, DPP (Cheung et al. 2024). The DPP won 40 per cent of the vote in the three-party competition. In the legislative election, the DPP lost its previously held majority in the Legislative Yuan, winning 51 seats; the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party won 52 seats and the Taiwan’s Peoples Party (TPP) eight 8 seats, meaning no party secured a majority (Bloomberg 2024).

The voter turnout for the 2024 presidential election was 71.86 per cent, down from 74.9 percent in 2020, while turnout in the 2024 legislative election turnout was 71.8 per cent, down from 74.86 per cent (CEC n.d.b).