Human error during Taiwan election results broadcast sparks claims of 'vote-rigging'

Published on January 23, 2024 at 09:19
4 min read
By Carina CHENG, AFP Hong Kong

Taiwanese social media users have falsely claimed a slip-up during a live broadcast of election results after the January 13 polls was proof of vote-rigging by SET News -- an outlet widely considered to be friendly towards the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The broadcaster told AFP it issued a correction after mistakenly showing on-screen that one of the opposition presidential candidates Ko Wen-je received over 750,000 votes. Taiwan's election authority has also said there were no instances of fraud in the election.

"SET News has revolted! Rigging votes for Ko Wen-je," reads the traditional Chinese caption of a TikTok post on January 13, 2024.

The 16-second clip, viewed more than 1.2 million times, is a recording of a screen displaying a live stream of election results by Taiwanese broadcaster SET News.

A voice can be heard laughing in the background and saying "what's up with SET News? They're rebelling", as the number of votes for the opposition Taiwan People's Party candidate, Ko Wen-je, drops from 756,092 to 356,092.

Screenshot of the false post, taken January 22, 2024.

The clip circulated as Taiwanese voters delivered a comfortable victory to the ruling DPP's Lai Ching-te on January 13 in a widely-watched election, defying Beijing's warnings against voting for a man it considers a separatist.

Beijing, which claims Taiwan as its territory and has never renounced force to bring it under its control, responded to Lai's victory by saying it would not change the "inevitable trend of China's reunification", while Lai vowed to defend the island from China's "intimidation".

The Central Election Commission (CEC) said Lai won 40.1 percent of ballots, ahead of the 33.5 percent won by the candidate from another opposition party -- the Kuomintang's (KMT) Hou Yu-ih -- and Ko's 26.5 percent.

The same clip showing the SET News broadcast was shared thousands of times alongside claims of vote rigging across TikTok here and here, as well as on Facebook here.

User comments indicated they believed the claim.

"The votes should be re-examined," one comment reads.

"I feel like there is poll-rigging," reads another.

In fact, the gaffe was caused by human error, SET News told AFP.

Human Error

The broadcaster said in a statement provided to AFP on January 19 that the mistake has been misinterpreted online, adding they issued a clarification when it was brought to their attention (archived link).

A reverse image search led to a live stream of the election results on one of SET News' official YouTube channels (archived link).

The segment of the live stream where the figures were mistakenly displayed has been removed from this version of the video but the correction notice issued at 4:22 pm (0822 GMT) can still be seen.

The chyron at the video's eight-hour, 21-minute mark reads: "Correction notice 16:22 SET News results display mistakenly shows 750,000 votes for Ko Wen-je".

The anchor, Hsu Ya-kuei, can also be heard clarifying the higher number was a mistake.

"The mistake happened because staff reporting results from various regions of SET News were unfamiliar with operations and erroneously input the number of votes," she said. "We hereby issue a correction."

The erroneous version of the broadcast can still be seen in a different version of the stream uploaded to another of SET News' official YouTube channels here (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the false posts (left) and the SET News broadcast displaying the wrong results for Ko (right):

Screenshot comparison of the video in the false posts (left) and the SET News broadcast displaying the wrong results for Ko (right)

The number of votes for Ko can be seen jumping up to more than 756,000 from 349,000 at the eight-hour, 17-minute and 54-second mark of this live stream. The figure remains on-screen for about 27 seconds before being revised down to 356,000.

After the revision, a chyron displays a correction notice while the anchor Huang Chien-ping says: "We would like to issue a correction, two to three minutes ago, external staff mistakenly displayed votes for Ko Wen-je."

On January 15, 2024, the CEC said there was "no possibility of vote-rigging" in the election, noting that auditors were assigned by each of the political parties and members of the public were permitted to videotape the entire vote-counting process alongside inspectors who monitored proceedings (archived link).

It subsequently said it would take legal action against people who made fraud allegations on social media (archived link).

AFP has debunked other false claims about the Taiwanese elections here and here.

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