Taiwan's biggest opposition Nationalist Party chairman Lien Chan (L) shakes hands with James Soong, chairman of the second biggest opposition party, the People First Party, at a news conference after a closed-door meeting to discuss possible cooperation in Taipei December 6, 2001. The leaders of the two opposition parties agreed not to join President Chen Shui-bian's coalition government. REUTERS/Simon Kwong 

Black stands for corruption; gold means money! Flagrant vote buying and unscrupulous politicians awash in money have long plagued elections in Taiwan. Not that Taiwan alone bears that scourge. Those familiar with Chicago's rancid election history will recall the characterization of the infamous 1960's mayor Richard J. Daley: "Vote early and vote often." Still Taiwan's elections have been, well, rife with "mudslinging," "vitriol," "scandals," and "lawsuits" in the words of the Agence France-Presse.

But this December's parliamentary election was different, not so much by the absence of negative campaigning or trading of nasty barbs among candidates, as by President Chen's commitment to clean up campaigning and to damper corruption. For example the Attorney General Chen Ting-nan assigned hundreds of prosecutors to supervise some 80,000 police officers in the vigorous pursuit of voting buying and other unlawful campaigning. The attorney general also decreed that whenever a case resulted in sentencing, the arresting officer and his or her immediate supervisor would be rewarded. In this new Legislative Yuan, money--the mother's milk of politics--did not win! This time the electorate signaled its abhorrence with corruption and rejected the long-ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party, called the richest political party in the world with assets estimated at some $2.6 billion and plagued by hoary corruption. President Chen's commitment to cleaning up political campaigns and seeking to eliminate "black and gold" politics is a vital step in the evolution of democratic elections in Taiwan.

Even beyond political parties, however, the system of balloting and elections also breeds corruption and confusion. Understandably the Taiwanese parties and the government even now are seeking to replace the existing, nearly incomprehensible electoral system borrowed from the Japanese--who have abandoned it--with a system of balloting more transparent and more democratic. This imminent change of the electoral system is one of the signal stories coming out of the December 1 parliamentary elections.

Before tackling this somewhat complicated, if important, subject, however, I want to share a couple simpler observations about the election itself, for that was the ostensible reason our group of international analysts had been invited--to observe the election. We did so at 3 polling stations, 2 in Taipei City and 1 in Taipei County. Our first visit was to the Cheng De voting district, which had some 961 registered voters. We arrived about 10 a.m. at the polling site, located in a church, and it looked much like the spare, public polling locations I had worked at as an election judge in Elsah, Illinois. The Cheng Du voting station had 2 voting booths, which looked identical to the canvas-shrouded booths we use in Jersey County Illinois. The voting station opened at 8 a.m. and remained open until 4 p.m., closing a bit earlier than U.S. polling stations, but the turnout was quite high: 70-80%, we were told. All Taiwanese aged 20 and older are automatically registered to vote. I was moved by the community spirit when I saw an elderly and unsighted man being led into a voting booth. Inquiring about the availability of absentee ballots, I was told Taiwan does not use them, which I found unusual. Still, the Taiwanese have a higher voter turnout than the United States, even without absentee voting. Going to the polls in person must not be a major obstacle to voters. 

After the polls closed, we visited the Wu-kung Elementary School, where the vote counting was in full progress. Again, democracy in action! One woman retrieved each ballot from a large, white-painted ballot box in the middle of the room and handed the paper ballot, which appeared to be about 15 inches long and perhaps 8 inches wide, to a second woman. This 2nd worker scanned the ballot containing some 37 candidates listed by number, by name and by picture. Below one of the candidate's names was a red mark, indicating the single candidate for whom that ballot had been cast. The 2nd worker, then in loud and husky voice called out the name, the party, and the number of the candidate chosen on that ballot to 3 other poll workers standing in front of a chalkboard on which they recorded the tally. The poll workers were very business-like in their pursuit of the electoral vote count and visibly proud of their role in the democratic process. I knew and shared their pride.

In Part 2 of "Ballots Of "Black And Gold" I will explain a bit about the Taiwanese electoral system called the single non-transferable vote (SNTV) and how it affects the voter and "black and gold," the invincible link between money and corruption. And I will compare that inscrutable system with both the U.S. system of elections and the German 2-List System, which is considered by many analysts the most likely replacement for SNTV.