Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/12/08
By Christie Chen
Taipei, Dec. 8 (CNA) The Central Election Commission (CEC) on Tuesday fined one website and four daily newspapers for violating the law governing the release of election polls during the local government and council elections of late last year.
Exchange of Future Events (XFuture), a website that predicts future events, and its company representative, were each levied a fine of NT$500,000 (US$15,163) for predicting the 2014 election results on XFuture’s website and in its forum, but failing to include background information about the opinion polls, the CEC said in a statement.
Four media outlets — China Times, Liberty Times, Apple Daily, and the Commons Daily — and their respective representatives were also each slapped a fine of NT$500,000 for releasing the same survey without verification, the CEC said.
Article 53 of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act stipulates that any publication of election surveys or data related to the candidates 10 days prior to the vote must be accompanied by information containing the name of the unit or host in charge of the survey, the survey period, sampling method, matrix and sample size, sources of funding and margin of error. It also bans any such publication within 10 days of the vote. [FULL STORY]
