Saturday marked a major decision point for the people of Taiwan. The party now in power supported continued independence from Communist China.
Naturally, China threw everything it could into influencing those elections in favor of the opposition party. Naturally, that would include massive efforts at influencing social media.
But for all the technological advantages the CCP might have, those technologies have exactly ZERO chance to mess with Taiwan’s system of voting. Taiwan is very much old-school in its methodology.
There are no ballot harvesting methods. No mail-in ballots. No electronic machine with ‘calibration’ errors or rejecting votes.
We even got to take a look at their process.
Taiwan just held their election.
They require you to bring photo ID and a notice to prove you are at the correct voting station.
They then use paper ballots and count the votes of each station one by one, in public view. There are no mail ballots. It’s all done in a few hours. pic.twitter.com/3hGkCqpBCk
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) January 13, 2024
Quite a difference from 2020 when we had people across multiple battleground states actively preventing the public from watching the process play out.
Everything is in-person, analog, and entirely transparent — and we had an immediate winner declared.
William Lai, Taiwanese President-Elect: "Between democracy and authoritarianism, we will stand on the side of democracy." pic.twitter.com/DDRsrsjLQ8
— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) January 15, 2024
Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party pulled off a historic third consecutive presidential victory on Saturday as voters shrugged off warnings by China that their re-election would increase the risk of conflict.
Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s current vice president, declared victory on Saturday evening while his two opposition rivals both conceded defeat.
“This is a night that belongs to Taiwan. We managed to keep Taiwan on the map of the world,” Lai told thousands of jubilant supporters at a rally after his win.
“The election has shown the world the commitment of the Taiwanese people to democracy, which I hope China can understand,” he added.
China responded soon after the vote by saying “Taiwan is part of China.”
Lai’s running mate Hsiao Bi-khim, who recently served as Taiwan’s top envoy to the United States, was elected Vice President. — ABCNews
As the quote above reminds us, it’s no secret that Xi wants to swallow up Taiwan and claim it as his own, even though that is the one part of China that NEVER fell to Mao’s communist revolution… and was the one place to which the legitimate ruling part of the day retreated.
Xi has been pretty blunt about his plans to take Taiwan, by force if necessary, in what he calls ‘reunification’ of China.
Taiwan, on the other hand, would see that ‘reunification’ effort as a threat to their legitimate autonomy.
Will Xi exploit the chaos of an absolutely crazy election cycle to make it’s move in the next 12 months? Only time will tell.
But this does remind us that Xi does NOT exert as much control as he thinks he does.
Psalms of War: Prayers That Literally Kick Ass is a collection, from the book of Psalms, regarding how David rolled in prayer. I bet you haven’t heard these read, prayed, or sung in church against our formidable enemies — and therein lies the Church’s problem. We’re not using the spiritual weapons God gave us to waylay the powers of darkness. It might be time to dust them off and offer ‘em up if you’re truly concerned about the state of Christ’s Church and of our nation.
Also included in this book, Psalms of War, are reproductions of the author’s original art from his Biblical Badass Series of oil paintings.
This is a great gift for the prayer warriors. Real. Raw. Relevant.
