From a reader in Taiwan:
“The way the polling station where I live was set up was like this. You
vote with a secret ballot for the president. (People can see that you vote
but not who you vote for) After you vote for the President you had to go
and get another ballot and go to a separate place in the same building to
vote for the referendum. Again people could not see if you voted YES or NO
but they could see if you voted at all. Since the KMT strategy was to have
people vote for them for president and then not vote at all in the
referendum this set up means that the KMT could keep a close eye on how
people voted. This let them either make sure the voters they bought stayed
bought or for their neighbors to intimidate them later. Since the setup of
the polling stations was decided by local government and most local
governments in the northern half of the island (where about 60% of the
people live) are KMT most of the polling stations were set up like this.
“It will be interesting to see if the election scrutiny the KMT is asking
for backfires on them. After all, even as a foreigner I know that they
were buying votes in my city, the going rate was 30$-60$ US (about 2 days
pay for the average Taiwanese) I actually hope the investigation reveals
the vote buying on both sides as that will help Taiwan’s democracy in the
long run.
“The important thing about the referendum was not the result but the fact
that they had one at all. China hates then idea of any expression of
Democracy in Taiwan so they wanted people not to vote at all. The KMT
listens to their masters in Beijing.”