Taiwan’s Fake Election Results

On March 20, tv viewers in Taiwan got to see real-time election results flashing across their screens as the votes were counted for the Presidential election. But it turns out now that the election results viewers were seeing didn't actually bear any relationship to reality. The tv stations were just making them up. For example, some stations were reporting 3 to 6 million votes already counted and opposition candidate Lien Chan taking a strong lead, when actually the election commission had only counted fewer than 200,000 votes and the election was a dead-heat. If memory serves me, didn't this same thing happen here in America during the 2000 election?

Politics

Posted on Mon Apr 26, 2004


Comments

Have to point out something. If I'm reading the blog correctly, the election results in Taiwan were supposedly as the votes were being counted. This would imply that everyone in Taiwan had already voted and the results were only being broadcast as they were being tabulated, and therefore couldn't be influenced by the count.

What happened here in 2000 was that they had declared the state of Florida for Gore before the panhandle of Florida, which is an hour behind, had closed their polls. So their declarations actually influenced the votes for the panhandle.

Not quite the same. More like how stations broadcast after an election with "50% reporting", "75% reporting", etc.

Thanks,

Lara
Posted by Lara  on  Fri May 07, 2004  at  10:28 PM
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