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.”