| There are many factors which have impact on electoral results, including political issues, economic factors, and cultural elements. Whether voters are in favor of these factors will affect their satisfaction of the incumbent government and the evaluation of the opposition party. In addition, voter's party identification, socioeconomic background and the candidates' personal charm will also have effect on electoral results. However, it is electoral system that has the most direct impact on electoral results.Before electoral reform, Taiwan used single non-transferable vote with multimember-district system as its electoral system, but its drawbacks came to be known in the implementation of the electoral process. For example, Zhang Shiying, one of the most famous scholars on electoral system studies, summarized its five drawbacks:(1)factions controlled party nomination; (2)breaking the spirit of party politics; (3)"Black Gold" politics; (4)extreme political views and unfair competition; (5)official corruption. And therefore in order to overcome these drawbacks, a legislative interim meeting was held in August,2004. One constitutional amendment including reducing legislature seats from 225 to 113 and using mixed-member majoritarian instead of single non-transferable vote was passed. Ad hoc National Assembly was held in June,2005. Kuomintang and Democratic Progressive Party in cooperation passed the seventh constitutional amendment and determined mixed-member majoritarian would be used in the seventh legislator's election in 2008.In January of 2008, the electoral results came out. Kuomintang won 81 seats, Democratic Progressive Party won 27 seats, and People First Party won 1 seat, besides other political parties and independent people with 4 seats. Compared to electoral results in 2004(Democratic Progressive Party won 89 seats, Kuomintang won 79 seats, People First Party won 34 seats and other political parties and independent people won 23 seats), we can observe in the seventh legislator's election Kuomintang had a great victory and seats Democratic Progressive Party won were far behind from that Kuomintang won. Considering the great differences between these two electoral results, we can't help focusing on the electoral reform in 2004.As we know, electoral reform from old electoral system to mixed-member majoritarian generally has two aims:one is seeking governability through Plurality and majority system, the other is seeking proportionality through Proportional Representation system. From electoral results of 2008, we may conclude that the goal of governability have achieved because Kuomintang have one-party dominance in parliament, but the new electoral system is less proportional than the old one. And therefore this article will discuss the impact electoral system has on electoral results form the aspect of proportionality through comparing electoral results in 2004 and 2008. |
