User:Mliu92/sandbox/TRA

The Taiwan Referendum Act lays out the legal process and requirements for the direct-vote referendum process in Taiwan. Although the right of referendum was guaranteed in the Constitution of the Republic of China as early as 1946, the Constitution was suspended almost of the Constitution under martial law in Taiwan meant that there were no referendums in Taiwan until the passage of the Referendum Act.

History
Article 17 of the Constitution of the Republic of China guarantees "the people shall have the right of election, recall, initiative and referendum," implementing "government by the People," one of the Three Principles of the People developed by Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China. The Constitution went into effect on 1947-12-25, but was effectively suspended under the 1948 "Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion" which established martial law in Taiwan until 1987.

Scope
Referendums may be initiated for a limited number of topics.

National Referendum
National referendums may be initiated for the following topics of national importance:
 * Laws
 * Legislative principles
 * Important policies
 * Amendment of the Constitution

Local Referendum
Local referendums may be initiated for the following topics concerning local autonomy:
 * Laws and regulations
 * Legislative principles
 * Important policies

Exclusions
The following topics are excluded from the referendum process:
 * Budgeting
 * Taxation
 * Investment
 * Salary
 * Personnel

Process
Once a suitable referendum has been identified and proposed, the process starts when a single leading proposer submits the following documents for review:
 * The main text of the referendum, limited to 100 words
 * The statement of reasons, limited to 1500 words
 * The model list of joint signers

The Review Commission has 10 days to examine the referendum documents, which involves having the list of proposers checked within 7 days by the government agencies of household registration and the Central Election Commission, and affected government agencies and the Legislative Yuan have one month to promulgate position papers. After the examination,

, which must be at least 5% of the total electors who voted in the latest election for President and Vice President

Qualifications
Every proposer (the leading proposer and all signatories on the list of proposers) for a referendum must:
 * Be at least 20 years old. This requirement was amended in 2006 and 2009.
 * Have resided in the jurisdiction (municipality or county, for local referendums) for at least 6 months

In addition to the above qualifications, signers may be rejected from the list of qualified signatures for the following reasons:
 * The name or address of the joint signer is recorded wrongly or unclearly
 * The ID card number of the joint signer is not provided, or is wrong or unclear
 * The signature of the joint signer is forged