I’m trying to make sense of why people don’t vote where they live in Taiwan. Many of my friends live in Taipei but vote elsewhere because their hukou is there. I’ve also heard that your landlord may charge you extra if you register your address there.
In the US, we are required to update our address and vote where we live. Recently, some taxes were voted on to increase in my hometown and it would certainly piss me off if people outside of my town were voting to increase my taxes.
Likewise, if people here have been living in Taipei for years and then go back to Kaohsiung to vote, I can see where people will register their address somewhere else to place votes where they want.
Friends that I talk to don’t see any problem with this.
There is a rule. You need to have your registration for a minimum of one year (or was it a couple of months) in a place before you can vote in a local election. So you can’t just change your hukou around all the time and vote everywhere. We moved to a different city a couple of months ago and my wife could only vote in the referendum part, not for the mayor.
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I did hear that is was 6 months. So @ma3xiu1, does that mean they don’t let you vote on the mayoral elections if you don’t live there? I was thinking that it could be used to influence the outcome. Hopefully they are looking for this kind of activity. I changed my voter registration address to match my residence address in the US as it is required by law. I changed it 3 times in 2 years but usually we don’t move that much.
They don’t let you vote if your hukou is too new. Whether or not you actually live there is a different matter.
Since hukous are usually linked to parents, the logic might be that it makes sense for you to be able to vote in your “original place” while you might live and earn somewhere else (maybe there is some confucian logic in there somewhere). I have friends in Taipei who travelled to Taichung etc to vote, because that’s where they originally come from and their parents still live there. And I also have a brother in law who’s hukou is with us although he lives somewhere completely different (gets him financial benefits from his employer).
A big thing is getting a hukou for a popular school district, obviously.
You basically need to own property to get your own hukou in that place. You can rent a huji or borrow folks huji for your kids but I don’t think you could vote with that.
It’s a form of classism, politicians seem don’t want to change it because
A) the local county budget from the national budget depends on how many people are registered in that area i.e. hukous registered . Metro cities get even more budget proportionally compared to the countryside. Also the income tax you pay may go through the county where the hukou is registered I believe (I don’t know how that works though )
B) it would upset their electoral calculations immensely, imagine all the suddenly enfranchised people in Taipei for instance !
C) schools use it to filter students and property prices are VERY dependent on people buying houses in a certain district for access to the best schools
I think mainly it’s used to keep property prices up to be honest. It has a huge effect in Taipei city.
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Not necessary. We could establish our new hukou in a rented apartment. There is some regulation about. Even, in some cases the owner agreement is not needed.
Edit. BTW I voted.
PS. This is link with the list of documents required according to different scenarios
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Good for you. I think you can only have two hukou at any residence and yeah you usually (basically always ) need the owners agreement . For schools you can ‘borrow a hukou’ but a lot of schools only accept primary hukou.
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Sometimes there are people on there you’ve never seen, like cousins, nieces etc.
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The going rate to be allowed use the hukou is something like 3000 ntd /mth in Taipei city. A lot of landlords simply refuse like ours.
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I had heard about the hukou charge which seems to me like it should be illegal.
I thought people liked to travel long distances for the vote but now I think that many do not like the inconvenience. I also hear that this is our system and it is how it is…I imagine that some people may have tried to change this.
A LOT of people highly resent this system, including my wife.
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Speaking of hukou…
My wife saw our neighbors’ names on the voting list when she was at the registration counter to vote. Very interesting our neighbors can have their hukou at their residence since by law their residence is actually NOT a legal residence.
Their place is a small place which they built illegally 10 years ago and have slowly modified it to become a quite nice little livable place…but the structure is still illegal and they have given up in their many attempts to get a permit for this structure.
To me is strange to be able to have your hukou in an illegal structure.
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