China Power | Politics | East Asia

KMT, TPP Mull Referendums to Go With Taiwan’s Local Elections

Up to six proposals – ranging from nuclear power to absentee voting – will be put to voters in the November polls, but without the usual round of campaigning for signatures.

Taiwan’s local elections – often referred to as “nine-in-one elections,” due to voting taking place simultaneously for nine different kinds of positions – will soon be upon us, with voting scheduled for the end of November. Alongside the elections, however, a number of referendum issues will also be voted on nationally. 

The referendums are advanced by the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), the opposition parties currently in control of the legislature. However, unlike past referendums, the KMT and TPP will not campaign with the general public for signatures to get these motions on the ballot. Instead, the KMT and TPP intend to use their combined majority in the legislature to initiate the referendums as a chamber resolution. Consequently, six referendums will take place simultaneously with the local elections. 

One issue that is to be voted on is a familiar one – nuclear energy. Specifically, the KMT calls for the abolishment of policies to enact a nuclear-free homeland. Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Taiwan has been phasing out the use of nuclear power by not extending the lifespan of nuclear reactors. Taiwan’s last operating nuclear reactor thus shut down in May 2025.

Opposing the use of nuclear energy in Taiwan has been a traditional stance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the Lai administration has submitted plans for the restart of two reactors. The Lai administration’s shift on nuclear energy may be due to concerns about Taiwan’s energy supply, which is highly reliant on liquefied natural gas, being cut off in the event of an invasion or blockade. There are also concerns internationally about the energy supply that Taiwan needs in order to continue to fuel the AI boom with its semiconductor manufacturing. 

That U-turn may take the wind out of the sails of the KMT’s nuclear energy referendum, even if the Lai administration claims that its eventual goal to phase out nuclear remain unchanged, and nuclear energy will be used alongside renewables. 

Likewise, the KMT has called for a referendum on capital punishment. This is another issue that the KMT has often leveraged in past years, with polls consistently showing high public support for capital punishment in Taiwan.

A Constitutional Court ruling in September 2024 narrowed the scope of the application of capital punishment but did not abolish it. An execution was carried out in January 2025, the first in five years. The KMT has consistently framed the DPP as having enacted a de facto moratorium on capital punishment. But because capital punishment is still on the books in Taiwan, a previous attempt by the KMT to hold a referendum calling for its reinstatement was thrown out in 2025 by the Central Election Commission (CEC). 

Another punitive proposal from the KMT would be to hold a referendum on the implementation of caning as a punishment for serious crimes such as child abuse, sexual assault, and fraud. This is an unusual proposal, seeing as there was no previous demand from society that caning should be implemented as a legal punishment in order to deter crime. 

Critics of the referendum have warned that implementing caning – mostly used as a legal punishment in countries with Sharia law or former British colonies – would fall afoul of human rights conventions that Taiwan has ratified. Perhaps cautious of the perception that the caning referendum is out of left field, KMT chair Cheng Li-wun previously tried to take the caning referendum off the agenda. However, pushback from the party’s legislative caucus led to the KMT continuing to advocate........

© The Diplomat