Yesterday's highlights

Consider this to be the same as one of those daily brief columns on the far side of the newspaper. It highlights the things that caught my eye most yesterday and the day before.

Today last day for legislative election registration

Expect a flood of people and some last minute surprise splits.

Ballot colors

The Central Election Commission decided [.doc] that in the upcoming legislative election, the at large ballot will be white (so that the colored symbols of the parties will be more clearly distinguishable); the districted seats ballot will be yellow; and the two referendum ballots will both be pink. Boxes will be be covered in a similar color to help prevent people from dropping their ballot in the wrong box.

In a related article, last Saturday's China Times editorial trashes the CEC for handing out the ballots in one line and says the organization bowed to political pressure.

Election outlook

The United Daily News reports that the DPP fears it has only 10 safe legislative seats and could be entirely wiped out in the north, citing a DPP internal poll leaked to them. According to the Liberty Times, The DPP itself says it is confident of 30 seats and hopes to capture between 50 and 60 seats.

Autonomous Aboriginal Districts

The DPP-lead cabinet again submitted a draft of the Autonomous Aboriginal Districts bill to the Legislative Yuan. The original submission back in 2003 was trapped in committee with the four versions the KMT had put forward at the time. Expect a similar result with this bill.

TVBS polls

TVBS conducted polls in several close districts on the seventh of this month, something I caught on their channel last night. I will add these poll results to the map analysis as soon as possible.