Traffic heavy in hotly contested counties; little trouble reported

Road travel in National Freeway No.1 and National Freeway No.3 was mostly modest as of last morning. Traffic was up 75 percent in Freeway No.5, which connects Taipei and Yilan, compared to normal weekends but there was no congestion.

Public transport to the eastern counties of Yilan, Hualien and the offshore island of Kinmen was packed as many people were returning to vote in these hotly contested areas.

The opposition Democratic Progress Party (DPP) was determined to reclaim Yilan and send its candidate Lin Tsung-hsien to the magistrate seat after the party lost the county to the incumbent, the ruling Kuomintang's (KMT) Lu Kou-hua, in the last election in 2005 after 24 years of unbroken DPP rule.

The KMT also faced heavy competition in its traditional strongholds in Hualien and Kinmen as the KMT candidates in the counties were challenged by strong independent candidates who had broken away from the KMT after failing to receive the party's nominations.

Most of the railway, bus and air tickets to these counties were fully booked Friday night and demands only eased up a little yesterday morning. No major violations had been reported so far on election day, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said Saturday.

As of yesterday afternoon, a total of 11 violations involving 14 persons had been reported. These included five cases of ballots that were torn up, two in which ballots were taken out of the polling station, and one instance of a person illegally displaying his ballot. In another case, a wanted criminal was arrested when he went to vote.

Also, four people were arrested for alleged vote buying in Miaoli County.

Meanwhile, a voter's cell phone went off while he was casting his ballot in Hualien County. He is subject to a fine of at least NT$30,000 (US$931), as voters are not allowed to take mobile phones and cameras into polling stations.

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