Taiwan’s Household Registration System Disenfranchises Its Young Voters

When Taiwan lines up to vote in Saturday’s presidential and legislative elections, many young people—especially those of a lower socioeconomic status—will be denied the ability to easily cast their ballots.

Taiwan’s voting laws are tethered to its hukou (戶口), or household registration, system. While many countries allow voting by mail or by proxy, Taiwan’s election laws only permit people to cast their ballots in person at the station closest to their registered address.

In practice, this stipulation leads to a lower turnout among young voters who have moved away from home for study or work.

Traveling across the country, or to an outlying island, can make for a difficult and expensive journey. And while most offices are closed on Saturdays, Taiwan’s thriving service sector and 24-hour establishments mean young people in the service industry may feel pressured to work, or simply be unable to take time off to go home and vote.

Employers are required by law to comply with requests for time off this Saturday, which is a national holiday.

In reality, it is hard for junior workers to raise the issue with their bosses, says Alvin Chang (張育萌), secretary-general for the Taiwan Association for Youth Democracy (TAYD).

For this election, TAYD launched a travel subsidy for young voters in association with the National Union of Students, dropping ticket prices for some voters to just NT$111 (US$3.70).

The scheme, which raised over NT$2.8 million (US$93,130) through crowdfunding, will fund about 3,500 tickets.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and third parties have aimed recent rallies at younger crowds, complete with “Go Home and Vote” stickers, and DPP legislative candidate Enoch Wu (吳怡農) has called to lower Taiwan’s voting age from 20 to 18.

Stickers urging Taiwan’s youth to go home and vote. (Photo: Cat Thomas)

A coalition of young Youtubers also launched a video urging the youth of Taiwan to vote. Since being uploaded on December 26, it has received over 1.6 million views.

Chang says he is optimistic that 2020 will see a higher youth turnout, pointing to a generation of more politically aware youth who have engaged with social issues online since the 2014 Sunflower Student Movement.

Chen Ching-hsin (陳敬昕), founder of the group “Anti-Extradition Law Movement From All the College Students in Taiwan,” agrees, saying Taiwanese students will be motivated to vote by the ongoing pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

But Taiwan’s hukou system remains a persistent obstacle for young voters.

Saturday’s election is projected to see around 1.18 million young people become eligible to vote for the first time. (Taiwan’s official electoral register will be finalized today.)

In 2016, Taiwan had around 18.8 million eligible voters, 8.25 million of whom were over 50 and about 3 million between 20 and 29. As of September 2019, Taiwan had 19.3 million eligible voters, of whom close to 10% will likely be first time voters.

Exit polling is not allowed in Taiwan, rendering electoral patterns opaque. However, in the 2016 presidential election, a gender equality study run by the Central Elections Commission (CEC) offered a glimpse into which citizens were showing up to vote.

The study, which sampled just over 200,000 voters in 230 neighborhoods, recorded the age and sex of voters who collected ballot papers.

The results, described at length by the Taiwan election blog Frozen Garlic, showed that voters between 20 and 29 accounted for 17.1% of the electorate and had a turnout rate of 52.9%.

Voters over 60, who made up 24.2% of the electorate, had a turnout rate of 73.6%.

Therefore, voters over 60 made up 28.2% of total votes—almost twice that of voters between 20 and 29, who cast 14.3% of votes. The study showed that voters between 50 and 85 uniformly accounted for more actual votes than their proportion of the electorate.

This is where household registration comes into play.

Taiwan’s hukou system, introduced during the Japanese occupation of the island, mandates in modern times that voters are assigned the polling station closest to the address on their citizen ID card.

For young voters, this often means their family’s home. Many young voters rent apartments in cities while working or studying without changing their hukou.

Elderly voters, meanwhile, are far more likely to actually live at their registered address.

Young people who choose to go home and vote thus find themselves scrambling to snap up train and plane tickets that can be in short supply—especially to remote areas.

Regional turnout figures tell a revealing story.

In Taiwan’s 2016 presidential election, voter turnout was 66%—its lowest ever. The country’s west coast, which enjoys better transit links, had higher turnout rates. The east coast and Taiwan’s outlying islands, however, had lower turnout, ranging from 58% in Hualien to just 33% in Kinmen.

The government has attempted to ameliorate the issue. In 2016, it forbade landlords from denying their tenants the right to switch their household registration to their rented accommodation, at risk of a fine of up to NT$300,000 (US$9,980).

In practice, however, landlords often refuse to declare properties as rentals to avoid higher income and land tax rates. Young renters often shy away from confronting their landlords over a fear their contracts will not be renewed, especially in Taipei’s cutthroat housing market.

One young tenant who successfully registered his hukou at a rental property said it was a frustrating process.

“I went to see so many apartments, but the landlord would say, ‘You can’t move your hukou here,” said Aric, 32. “If it’s a good house, there are usually another three sets of people interested.”

“In Taipei, the landlord has all the power.”

‘In Taipei, the landlord has all the power.’ (Photo: Public domain)

Aric eventually took advantage of a Taipei City government housing scheme for young, low-income earners. The government provides an agent to the landlord free of charge, along with tax breaks. To be eligible, landlords must comply should tenants wish to move their hukou to their new address.

Aric’s difficulties are, sadly, far from isolated. Calls to several household registration offices in Taipei revealed that each office has a different way of handling the transfer process.

Da’an district makes things easy, requiring only a housing contract and a citizen ID. The office said that while landlords can check the system, they do not automatically inform them that a tenant has registered at the address.

In Shilin district, the office insisted that the tenant would have to present a land tax receipt—a document impossible to obtain without a landlord’s express consent.

The office at Xinyi district initially said the transfer is not possible without the landlord’s permission. After a lengthy discussion on legalities, they suggested that tenants could apply for alternatives to an arranged visit to the property so the office could confirm the residency without informing the landlord.

One office staffer admitted that, although she is aware of her rights, her own hukou remains registered in south Taiwan. Despite being a civil servant, she does not want to risk conflict with her landlord.

Taiwan’s confusing, inconsistent hukou transfer process is tilted in favor of landlords who are often reluctant to comply.

Combined with a general absence of public education on tenant’s rights, this helps explain why Taiwan’s youth are reluctant to push to transfer their hukou.

This leaves many young people, especially those with lower incomes, far less able to exercise their right to vote.

Those who cannot afford the deposit on a house—or do not have relatives or friends in their city who will allow you to transfer your hukou to their home address—are potentially disenfranchised.

Meanwhile, landlords who own multiple properties evade their taxes by failing to declare them as rentals, and are free to allow friends and relatives the luxury of registering at such a property if necessary.

Chang of TYAD says this disparity is a key factor in keeping young voters away from the polls.

“The main problem now is the huge gap between the rich and the poor,” he says, “and the related injustices with the registering of residential addresses, as well as the imbalance of development around Taiwan.”

During this election cycle, TYAD has acted to take advantage of one of the government’s few policy successes in raising youth turnout.

In 2016, the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) set the presidential election date to coincide with the day after final exams for many university students, a considerable number of whom had recently participated in the 2014 Sunflower Movement.

Last year, however, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education mandated that classes or exams cannot be set for election day.

This welcome change allowed TYAD, along with the National Union of Students, to launch its ticket subsidy program.

The scheme had only two stipulations: Applicants must be of voting age, and they must book tickets to their registered hometown. There was no requirement for participants to be registered students.

TYAD focused on routes between Taipei and Hualien, Kaohsiung and Hualien, and Kaohsiung and Taitung to help young people from the east of Taiwan—home to low turnout rates—to go home and vote.

The association also organized 78 buses around Taiwan and subsidized ferry tickets to Penghu.

Other measures to encourage voter participation include a special election discount on travel of up to 30% for students on state-owned Kuo-Kuang buses.

Additionally, yesterday’s opening of the improved Suhua highway between Yilan and Hualien, just five days before the election, and a newly launched direct bus route from Taipei to Hualien will cut travel time to 3.5 hours for around NT$320 (US$10.50).

Saturday’s election will also see an increase in the number of polling stations.

November 2018’s regional elections were mired in chaos. Polling stations saw wait times of up to four hours as both voters and staffers struggled with 10 referendums alongside votes for regional candidates.

To alleviate this, the CEC has increased polling stations to almost 17,000—around one station per 1,200 voters, rather than the 2018 figure of one per 1,300 to 1,700 voters.

Saturday’s vote does not involve referendum questions, meaning waiting times are likely to be more acceptable.

No matter what the polls suggest, all that matters on election day is who actually turns up to vote. Polling can be unpredictable—for example, it omits Taiwanese living and working in China who often return home to vote themselves.

Taiwan can take clear steps to make things easier for its younger voters. Lowering the voting age for all elections to 18—in line with international standards—is a discussion worth having. However, unless household registration offices streamline their registration processes to prioritize the legal rights of tenants—and keep landlords from illegally blocking hukou transfers—young voters, especially those with lower incomes, will find themselves overcoming unnecessary obstacles to go home and vote.

(Cover photo by Artemas Liu, CC BY 2.0)