Voting in Taipei

Unlike in Taiwan, where citizens must travel to their registered home electorate to vote in person on election day, overseas New Zealanders can vote remotely—at any time during the couple of weeks leading up to an election.We can vote online, or in person at an embassy. In Taiwan’s case, this means a de facto embassy: the “New Zealand Commerce and Industry Office”.(The New Zealand and Taiwan governments have an unofficial relationship. Consequently, the de facto Taiwan embassy in New Zealand—which I visited last year—is called the “Taipei Economic and Cultural Office”.)For New Zealanders, online voting is exclusively available to those of us who are overseas.I voted online in 2017 (from Australia) and 2023 (from Taiwan), but both times it felt a little flaky. Despite having worked in digital publishing for two decades, I couldn’t be sure I’d satisfied the very specific resolution and contrast requirements for printed-then-scanned voting documents—and I had no way of knowing whether my…