The Democratic Progress Party (DPP) legislator Su Chiao-hui, alongside with her colleagues, recently proposed to amend the Referendum Act that a copy of each voter’s identity card to be attached to the list of co-signers should be provided, and even to authorize the Household Registration Agency to decide whether a referendum should be proceeded in accordance with its verification of the number and proportion of unlawful copies. The Kuomintang was strongly opposed to the amendment, adding that it was an extremely absurd and unreasonable "unsuccessful standard." The KMT questioned whether the Tsai Ing-wen administration was afraid of facing public will; otherwise, why would DPP legislators repeatedly make attempted amendments to the Referendum Act to prevent people from showing free will?

The KMT pointed out that when the Referendum Act was revised previously, concerns had been raised on the matter of whether attaching a photocopy of an identity card could post risk on violating human rights standards. Former Vice President Annette Lu also strongly expressed at the time that such actions could come with high risk of infringing personal privacy. As the DPP had recently removed these human rights violation provisions, wanting to restore them is equivalent to a serious reversal of democratic system.

Regarding an amendment in the proposal: "If the household registration authority deletes more than 30,000 people or more than one-tenth of the number of joint signatures, the competent authority should announce that the referendum proposal is invalid," the KMT pointed out that according to the current Referendum Act, there are particular thresholds and standards throughout the process from proposals, joint signatures, to the completion of cases and voting rates. If there are false or typographical errors in the roster of joint signers, they will automatically be eliminated during the review phase of the list of proponents, thus will not be included in the result. Therefore, there is no need for additional amendments. Furthermore, the DPP itself has pointed out the absurdity of the failure standard. Former DPP legislator Tuan I-kang stated that if the entire referendum proposal is invalidated due to a possibility of a deceased person or a possibility of signer or sponsor fraud, it is simply out of principle of proportionality. According to the latest proposal of the DPP members, the referendum would be unsuccessful if someone deliberately sends in 30,000 copies of false joint signatures, thus the initiators of a referendum would directly face possible criminal responsibility, as if taking a step forward to imprison a referendum

The KMT questions that the DPP knew that problems on incorrect information could be eliminated simply by removing false information. However, the DPP now proposes a clearly flawed amendment just to prevent the people from showing their will. The KMT stresses that the existence of referendum is to resolve the problem of insufficient public participation in law-making. The Tsai administration, on the other hand, has repeatedly proposed improper amendments, turning referendum into an intimidating weapon against the people.

The KMT stresses that the DPP once demanded " tie referendums to the general election”, and President Tsai Ing-wen claimed she would "break the bird cage and return power to the people." However, when the outcome of the referendum did not meet expectations of the DPP, they attempted to confiscate the referenda. This brought to light that the so-called ‘democracy’ under Tsai’s government meant that "the DPP are masters of this house". The KMT therefore called on the public to pay continuous attention on the issues of referenda, encouraging them to vote on August 28th, so the referenda can re-tie the general election and curb the Tsai administration from harming democracy and human rights.

（This is an abridged version of an official KMT Chinese language press release）