In my latest piece for Taiwan Insight, I consider the lack of absentee or early voting options for people stuck in quarantine or who were COVID-positive during the 2022 Taiwan local elections.

I'm pretty critical of Taiwan's leadership here: they had more than two years to think about this problem, but they didn't learn from the rest of the world and were woefully underprepared to hold an election during a pandemic. 65k people were denied the right to vote as a result.

​That is indefensible. It is long past time for Taiwan to introduce alternative ways to vote for citizens who can't physically access their polling stations. Korea and Japan share similar electoral administrative features, but they are way ahead of Taiwan now.

"With its colourful and fiercely contested campaigns, efficient electoral administration, and universal acceptance of the results, Taiwan’s recent local elections were, in most ways, a sign of a vibrant and healthy democracy. But one aspect failed to live up to basic democratic standards: thousands of people were denied the right to vote because they were trapped in mandatory COVID quarantine. After nearly three years of dealing with a global pandemic, Taiwan’s leaders should have been able to find some way to accommodate these citizens, as many other countries around the world have managed to do under much more difficult circumstances. Instead, they ignored the issue, and many Taiwanese were denied the right to vote. Taiwan’s democracy has received much recognition recently for its impressive vitality and resilience. But on voting rights, it is now a laggard. It can and must do better."

The rest of this piece appears at Taiwan Insight. 

The Conference Group on Taiwan Studies is part of the American Political Science Association. It hosts a number of special panels (last year there were seven) that have a separate submission and evaluation process. If you are interested in presenting a paper on anything related to Taiwan at APSA next year in Los Angeles, consider submitting to CGOTS. Details below:   

2023 American Political Science Association
Conference Group on Taiwan Studies (CGOTS)

CALL FOR PAPERS
Submission Deadline: January 18, 2023

The 2023 American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting will be held from August 31- September 3, 2023, in Los Angeles, California. The conference theme is “Rights and Responsibilities in an Age of Mis- and Disinformation.”

CGOTS invites paper and panel proposals on Taiwan’s domestic politics, cross-Strait issues, and international relations consistent with the theme of “Rights and Responsibilities in an Age of Mis- and Disinformation.”

Political communication can be fraught with mis- and disinformation that can skew the political landscape and impact the attitudes and actions of political actors. Misinformation broadly refers to disseminating false, misleading, or unsubstantiated information without intent to deceive. Disinformation goes further to deliberately mislead with biased information, manipulated facts, or propaganda. Both can include fake news, conspiracy theories, and rumors and be spread by ordinary individuals, influencers, governments, public-relations firms, internet bots, or human-curated fake social media accounts. Mis- and disinformation are not new, but these phenomena are becoming increasingly prevalent and problematic worldwide. Advances in communication technologies mean that they can spread faster and broader than fact-based information. Polarized publics are especially eager consumers. A further innovation is producing “deep fakes” that make distinguishing fakes and facts harder.

On one hand, spreading information–whether false or true–can be expressed in the terminology of rights. Efforts to address mis- and disinformation take place in the context of the internationally recognized human rights of freedom of thought and expression. Engaging in mis and disinformation can be seen as exercising the right to freedom of thought and speech. In this vein, limiting or regulating information flows can be portrayed as overstepping or infringing upon these rights and controlling people’s actions. Governments may use tackling mis- and disinformation to justify infringing these rights. At the extreme, critics have linked information-monitoring to the kinds of oppression we see from authoritarian governments.

On the other hand, exercising the right to freedom of expression without embracing responsibility for providing accurate, evidence-based, and truthful information hurts trust and many rights other than free speech. Covid-19-related misinformation, for example, undercuts the right to health. Election-related disinformation can corrode the right to free and fair elections by discouraging voting, eroding trust in democratic norms, and corrupting institutions. Falsehoods that amplify hatred against racial and ethnic, religious, or political minorities violate the right to non-discrimination, freedom of religion, and even self-determination. In this vein, we could perhaps have a right to the truth that supersedes the “right” to lie. Nonetheless, even apparent attempts to fight mis- and disinformation could be employed against political opponents, repress critical journalists’ freedom of the press, and hurt markets.

For the 2023 Annual Meeting, we encourage participants to consider questions about “Rights and Responsibilities in an Age of Mis- and Disinformation” in Taiwan, especially those that highlight diversity in methodological approaches and topics. We also welcome proposals attentive to various domestic and international challenges Taiwan encounters in a world of mis- and disinformation. Entering the final year of President Tsai Ing-wen’s second term, studies examining changes in the political landscape in Taiwan and its future direction is particularly desired. We encourage scholars to raise and study the following questions under the Taiwan context, including how citizens react to the Mis- and Disinformation in Taiwan; how to better understand the diverse social clusters and their respective political views and demands in Taiwan; how to utilize and demonstrate various methodological approaches to advance scholarly understanding of Taiwan politics; how to comprehend cross-Strait relations under Tsai’s second term and the future administration; and how to incorporate the concept of diversity in scholarly research of Taiwan politics.

We also welcome proposals that utilize innovative and diverse approaches to understand how Mis- and Disinformation in Taiwan affect the attitude toward allies and competitors. Research investigating the dynamics of U.S.-Taiwan-China relations, the effect of Mis- and Disinformation on Taiwan’s domestic and international politics, the impact of Mis- and Disinformation on Taiwan’s outward and inward trade and investment patterns, the potential changes between the cross-Strait relations in the era of misinformation, and the public perception on Taiwan’s foreign policy is highly desirable. These questions help the political science academe to understand Taiwan in the global context better and raise Taiwan’s international visibility.

Please send proposals to APSA, and choose CGOTS as one of your submission’s subfield : https://connect.apsanet.org/apsa2023/

The submission deadline is January 18, 2023.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Austin Wang (austin.wang@unlv.edu)
CGOTS Coordinator. Travel support for CGOTS panelists is subject to the availability of external funding.

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