NEW TAIPEI (TVBS News) — A civic group behind the recall campaign against New Taipei City Mayor Hou Yu-ih stated on Tuesday (Feb. 20) that they had already gathered over 20,000 signatures during the first stage of the recall process.
According to volunteer Miss Chen from the group, their effort has been underway for a month, already achieved half of their goal of 40,000 signatures.
Hou was elected as the mayor of New Taipei City in 2022. In 2023, he was appointed as the presidential candidate for the Kuomintang (KMT), and upon losing the 2024 presidential election, he reverted to his mayoral position.
Under the Public Officials Election And Recall Act, the recall process consists of two stages of gathering signatures from the electorate followed by a vote determining the result of the recall if the petition passes.
The first stage is the proposal stage which requires proposers exceeding 1% of the total number of electors in the original election district. According to the Central Election Commission, as of the fourth New Taipei City Mayor election on Nov. 26, 2022, the number of voters was 3,316,517.
Initially, an estimated 33,000 proposals were needed, thus setting the goal at 40,000, as stated by the civic group for the recall of Hou.
The second stage requires signatories exceeding 10% of the total number of electors from the original election district, translated into roughly 332,000 endorsement forms.
Finally, for the voting stage, the number of approving votes must exceed the number of disapproving votes and reach at least a quarter of the total elector numbers in the original election district for the recall to pass.