Election Bulletins: The State-Distributed Baseline of Fairness, and the Split-Stream of Candidate-Funded Campaign Literature

In early November 2026, a thick "election bulletin" will appear in mailboxes across Taiwan.

The cover bears the seal of the CEC (Central Election Commission). Inside are the policy platforms, educational backgrounds, and campaign platforms of every candidate in the race. The moment an 18-year-old first-time voter opens that bulletin, they are encountering one of Taiwan's cheapest yet most effective pieces of democratic infrastructure — a printed document that separates "what candidates want to say" from the influence of advertisers.

Most voters will flip through a few pages before tossing it in the recycling bin. But behind this seemingly ordinary booklet lies institutional evolution accumulated since 1980, and a clear design choice: the state bears the minimum cost of ensuring every candidate is "heard," while candidates themselves bear the additional expense of wanting to be heard more. The split-stream logic of state-distributed vs. candidate-funded has been accumulating ever since.

The election bulletin is the most concrete, most visible, and most overlooked piece of Taiwan's democratic infrastructure.

Legal Basis: Three Articles Written into the Election and Recall Act

The election bulletin is not an administrative custom — it is a legally mandated electoral obligation.

Article 47 of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act stipulates: The election commission shall compile each candidate's ballot number, photograph, name, date of birth, sex, place of birth, recommending party, education, experience, and policy platform, and shall compile and print an election bulletin, delivering it to every household in the electoral district two days before voting day¹.

Article 48 sets out the rules and character limits for filling in education and experience; Article 49 defines the legal boundaries of policy platform content — it must not "incite others to commit the crime of insurrection or treason," "violate the provisions of any other criminal statute," or contain "circumstances in violation of Article 51"².

These three articles may seem dry, but they form the skeleton of the entire election bulletin system: the state has an obligation to print, to deliver, and to police the lower bound of content; candidates have an obligation to submit and to take responsibility for what they fill in.

The biggest difference from campaign literature lies here. Campaign literature is the candidate's own speech (regulated by Article 49 of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act and the Political Donations Act, but relatively loosely), whereas the election bulletin is an official document distributed by the state — once printed and mailed, it carries the formal legitimacy of a state organ. Precisely because of this legitimacy, content review must be rigorous, yet not so rigorous that it becomes censorship.

How an Election Bulletin Is Made: A Six-Week Relay Race

If you ask a seasoned election official "how is an election bulletin made," they will tell you it is roughly a six-week relay race. Each leg has a clear statutory timeline, a clear margin for error, and a clear assignment of responsibility.

Leg 1: Candidates submit their entries. When registering to run, candidates fill in their education, experience, and policy platforms according to prescribed fields. Education is divided into "highest education" and "second-highest education"; experience is divided into "two most recent principal positions held"; and policy platforms have character limits that vary by election type (approximately 1,000 characters for Legislative Yuan candidates, around 600 for city/county councilors, and fewer for village chiefs)³.

Candidates must be aware as they fill these in: this content will be sent to every voter's household in the form of a state bulletin. Write something too vague and no one will read it; write something too inflammatory and it will be rejected; write something untrue and you may be reported. This tension is itself part of the institutional design.

Leg 2: Formal review by the CEC and local election commissions. After receiving candidates' submissions, the CEC (for central elections) or local election commissions (for local elections) conduct a formal review. "Formal review" means checking whether "the format complies with regulations," "the character count is within the limit," and "the content does not violate prohibited clauses" — it does not review "whether the policy platform is feasible" or "whether the education and experience are genuine"⁴.

This division of labor is important. If the CEC were to proactively review "whether a policy platform is feasible," it would amount to a state organ judging which political positions may be communicated — tantamount to speech censorship. So the CEC's review stops at the formal level: Does your text fit the character limit? Does your platform incite insurrection? Does the education field include a school name? Whether that school name is real, whether the platform is empty talk, or whether the experience is inflated — those are matters for voters, the media, and prosecutors to verify after the fact.

Leg 3: Lottery to determine ballot numbers. Candidate ballot numbers are determined by lottery, and this number also determines the order of appearance in the bulletin — candidate number 1 appears first, candidate number 2 second, and so on. All candidates' page layouts are identical (this is the core of the fairness principle), but the reading order is determined by lottery, so the fact that "candidates with earlier ballot numbers have a higher probability of being read" is a structural reality⁵.

Leg 4: Printing and proofreading. The CEC compiles all candidates' information into page layouts and sends them to the printer. The number of copies is calculated based on the number of eligible voters (one per voter) + copies for polling station use + archival copies. National elections routinely require printing over 20 million copies⁶. Proofreading is conducted by dedicated CEC staff and the printer in a double-check process — a single misprinted character can spark controversy.

Leg 5: Delivery. By law, the bulletin must be delivered to every household in the electoral district two days before voting day. In practice, the CEC works with the postal service, mobilizing large numbers of mail carriers for intensive delivery in the week before the election. The legal obligation to "deliver to every household" means delivery to the registered address, so voters whose registered domicile differs from their actual place of residence may not receive it — one of the system's structural blind spots.

Leg 6: The last bulletin on voting day. An enlarged version of the election bulletin is also posted at polling stations, so voters who never read the bulletin or never received it can still see candidate information at the last moment before casting their ballot.

Six weeks, five handoffs, over 20 million printed copies, a single statutory deadline. This relay race must be run again every four years (with the staggered schedules of county/city executive, legislative, and presidential elections), and it has almost never had a major failure.

Why Is the Bulletin Content Self-Reported by Candidates?

The education, experience, and policy platforms in the election bulletin are entirely self-reported by the candidates. The CEC does not verify, edit, or comment on them — it only conducts a formal review.

This design may seem unsettling at first: candidates write their own content, so who guarantees it is true?

The answer is: law + media + civil society organizations + post-election prosecution.

A candidate who fills in false education credentials on the bulletin may violate Article 214 of the Criminal Code — the offense of causing a public officer to make a false entry in a public document — because the bulletin is an official document printed and issued after CEC review, and filling in false information amounts to causing the CEC, a government organ, to record untrue content. There have indeed cases in which candidates were prosecuted and even sentenced for false education credentials on the bulletin⁷.

But this verification mechanism is ex-post. Before the election, the media, civil society organizations, and opposing campaigns scrutinize the bulletin content, and any suspected irregularities are publicly exposed. After the election, if serious falsification is discovered, an election invalidity lawsuit may be filed. Pre-election, candidates themselves are responsible for truthfulness; post-election verification is handled by society and the judiciary.

This division of labor is consistent with the design philosophy behind how CEC commissioners are selected ("conducting elections in a way least susceptible to monopolization by any single political force") — the state organ does not serve as "arbiter of truth" but distributes judgment responsibilities across different actors: candidates bear their own responsibility, media and civil society verify after the fact, and the judiciary prosecutes after the fact. The CEC only guards the formal baseline⁸.

Bulletin vs. Campaign Literature: The Split-Stream of Two Funding Pools

This is the most easily overlooked yet most precisely designed feature of Taiwan's electoral system: the election bulletin is distributed by the state; campaign literature is funded by candidates themselves.

The printing and delivery costs of the election bulletin are covered by the state budget — candidates pay nothing. The pages for education, experience, and policy platforms are completely equal for all candidates — whether you are a four-term incumbent legislator or a first-time outsider candidate, your space in the bulletin is exactly the same size.

Campaign literature (flyers, billboards, loudspeaker trucks, advertisements) is entirely self-funded by candidates, subject to the campaign spending caps in Article 38 of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act⁹ and the income-source regulations of the Political Donations Act¹⁰. Wealthier candidates can spend more on campaign literature, but no matter how much they spend, their space in the election bulletin is exactly the same as their poorest opponent's.

The spirit of this dual-track design is: the state guarantees every candidate a minimum level of being heard (the bulletin); the market determines additional volume (self-funded literature). It is not "egalitarianism" (requiring all candidates to spend the same amount) nor "laissez-faire" (letting candidates spend however much they want), but a hybrid of "guaranteed floor + free competition."

The paradox is that bulletins and self-funded literature often use the same photograph and the same policy slogans — candidates treat the bulletin content as the "lowest common denominator" of their campaign messaging, then amplify it through self-funded literature. So what you read in the bulletin often also appears on flyers, billboards, and Facebook ads. The state-distributed minimum baseline, in turn, becomes the content foundation for candidates' self-funded campaign literature.

From 1980 to 2026: The Design Evolution of the Election Bulletin

The legal basis for the election bulletin can be traced back to the 1980 Civil Servants Election and Recall Act during the Period of Communist Rebellion¹¹. The original version was relatively crude: black-and-white printing, narrow page layouts, stricter character limits on policy platforms, and extremely low-resolution candidate photographs.

Over more than four decades, the election bulletin has undergone several important evolutions:

1980s: The election bulletin existed as an "election administration document," with virtually no aesthetic consideration in its layout and design. Candidate policy platforms were mostly in list form, and the education and experience fields were brief.

1990s: After the lifting of martial law intensified electoral competition, character limits for policy platforms in the bulletin were gradually relaxed, and some candidates began presenting concrete policy arguments rather than mere slogans. Color printing was introduced in the late 1990s, and candidate photographs became the visual focal point of bulletin pages.

2000s: After the first party alternation in power, the bulletin's role shifted from "party-state policy communication" to "candidate personal discourse platform." Candidates became increasingly deliberate about bulletin page design, and some parties even hired designers to assist with layout — although the page format was fixed, there was still room to play with color schemes, photographic style, and the rhetorical rhythm of policy text.

2010s: After the spread of smartphones, questions arose about whether "physical delivery" of the bulletin was still necessary. But the CEC and most academic research concluded that the physical bulletin remains a legally mandated delivery item that cannot be replaced — because it ensures that even voters least skilled with smartphones, and voters least proactive about seeking candidate information, can still access candidates' policy platforms.

2020s: Electronic bulletins became standard. The CEC website offers complete PDF downloads, and some referendums shifted to primarily electronic versions with paper as a supplement (particularly during the 2018 referendum-held-concurrently-with-election, when the bulletin became extremely thick and paper printing costs surged)¹². But the legal obligation for physical delivery has not been abolished.

Across forty-six years of evolution, the logic has not changed: state-distributed, self-reported by candidates, uniform format, formal review. The technological carrier has changed, design aesthetics have changed, character limits have changed, digitization has changed — but the core design choice has never been overturned.

International Comparison: Taiwan's Election Bulletin Is Relatively Rare

The election bulletin system is not common worldwide.

Japan: The senkyo kōhō (election bulletin) system is the most similar to Taiwan's — state-distributed, self-reported by candidates, uniform format, delivered to households¹³. Japan's election bulletin history dates back to the 1925 Universal Suffrage Act, predating Taiwan's. The Japanese version is more concise than Taiwan's, with smaller photographs, stricter character limits on policy platforms, and an almost government-document level of austerity.

South Korea: The election bulletin (선거공보) is state-distributed + the National Election Commission website fully publishes an electronic version¹⁴. South Korea's bulletin design is closer to a modern magazine style than Japan's or Taiwan's, and candidates can present themselves in an almost advertising-like manner within the prescribed rules.

The United States: There is no national-level concept of a "bulletin." Each state decides independently whether to provide a voter guide. California, Oregon, and Washington have relatively complete state-level voter guides, but most states — including Texas and Florida — do not¹⁵. Federal elections (presidential, congressional) have no national-level official bulletin whatsoever — candidate information relies entirely on media coverage, campaign websites, and self-funded advertising.

United Kingdom: Candidates' "election addresses" are printed and mailed at the candidate's own expense; the state does not intervene in content or bear costs¹⁶. Parliament provides a subsidy through Royal Mail allowing candidates to mail at reduced rates (one per voter), but content is entirely determined by the candidates. This design completely erases the line between "bulletin" and "self-funded literature" — everything candidates send to voters' homes is "self-funded literature."

Laying these four comparisons side by side, the position of Taiwan's election bulletin is clear: it has a bulletin where the US does not (the US has none), is fairer than the UK's system (UK candidates self-fund), is richer than Japan's (Japan has stricter character limits), and is close to South Korea's but with greater emphasis on paper delivery.

This position is not accidental — it is the accumulation of a series of "should we do it this way?" decisions since 1980. Each time, the choice was "the state should distribute it," "it should be delivered to households," "page space should be equal," "content should be self-reported by candidates."

Structural Problems: Blind Spots and Tensions in the Bulletin System

The election bulletin system is not without problems. From 1980 to the present, several structural tensions have persisted:

1. Delivery rate: The gap between registered domicile and actual residence

The bulletin is delivered to registered addresses. But Taiwan has a large number of voters who are "living elsewhere while their registration remains at their hometown" — students studying in other cities, workers on assignment, middle-aged people who have moved to metropolitan areas without transferring their household registration. These people do not receive the physical bulletin and must proactively visit the CEC website to access the electronic version for information¹⁷.

CEC data shows that every election, a significant proportion of bulletins are returned as "no one to receive" or "incorrect address." This gap has no short-term solution — unless the law is amended to "deliver to actual place of residence," which would involve larger changes to the Household Registration Act.

2. Information density: The reading burden for voters in the six special municipalities

In the six special municipalities — Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung — a single election may feature dozens of candidates (when city/county councilors, legislators, mayors, and village chiefs are all up for election simultaneously). The election bulletin becomes as thick as a catalog, and ordinary voters simply cannot read it cover to cover.

There is no perfect solution to this problem. Limiting candidate character counts would compress policy expression space; not limiting them makes the bulletin excessively thick. The current design maintains character limits but lets voters decide for themselves how much to read — the bulletin's role is to "ensure information availability" rather than "ensure information is read."

3. Page equality vs. the tension of ballot number lottery

All candidates have identical formatting — but page order is determined by ballot number lottery. Candidates with earlier ballot numbers appear earlier in the bulletin and have a higher probability of being read. This is a structural inequality, but the current design choice is "to randomize the inequality through lottery," avoiding systematic bias from methods like "sorting by stroke count of surname," which would still follow a predictable pattern.

4. Bulletin language: A blind spot in Taiwan's multilingual society

Taiwan's election bulletins are primarily in Chinese. As the immigrant population grows and indigenous language revitalization movements advance, "whether bulletins should be provided in multilingual versions" has begun to emerge as an issue¹⁸. Currently, some electoral districts provide indigenous-language versions or Southeast Asian language summaries, but the cost and technical barriers to full multilingualization remain high.

Referendum Bulletins: Consistent Logic but Exploding Page Counts

Referendum bulletins follow the same logic as candidate bulletins — state-distributed, self-reported by the proposing side, uniform format, formal review — but the structure differs slightly[^19]:

• Pro statement: Written by the referendum proposal's lead proposer
• Con statement: Collected according to the Referendum Act regulations (if a con side submits one)
• CEC position statement: Supplementary explanation of the referendum's legal scope and implementation conditions

During the 2018 referendum held concurrently with the general election, there were ten referendum questions on the ballot (same-sex marriage, the Tokyo Olympics naming dispute, air pollution, nuclear power, etc.). The election bulletin plus the referendum bulletin became extremely thick, and some voters reported "voting without finishing reading it." After this event, the Referendum Act was amended to decouple referendums from general elections (changing to a dedicated referendum voting day every two years), partly to avoid overloading the bulletin with information¹⁹.

Observation Points for the 2026 Election Bulletin

For the nine-in-one election on November 28, 2026, election bulletins will be delivered to households in early November. If you want to use this election to observe how the bulletin system operates, here are several points worth noting:

1. Do candidates make good use of bulletin space?

Traditional candidates (local factions, incumbent councilors) typically treat the bulletin as "a procedural legal document to go through the motions," with content leaning toward the formulaic (lists of education and experience + policy slogans). Younger candidates (small parties, first-time candidates) tend to treat the bulletin as "free campaign literature" and invest more thought into crafting policy arguments. Observing the difference between the two reveals generational shifts in campaign culture.

2. Specificity of policy platforms

Vague slogans like "boost the economy," "serve the people," and "build a livable city" are common on bulletins. But some candidates write verifiable commitments like "within four years, secure the extension of MRT Line X to District Y" or "promote a certain local autonomy ordinance." The degree of specificity often reveals whether a candidate is trying to scam votes or actually has policy preparation.

3. Education and experience verification

Media outlets and civil society organizations (such as Watchout, READr, PNN, etc.) typically verify candidate bulletin content before elections, especially education credentials and key experience²⁰. If falsification is found, it is publicly exposed. The 2026 election should see similar post-facto verification efforts, with the bulletin serving as the primary source material for these checks.

4. Digital version traffic

The number of downloads and page views of the electronic bulletin on the CEC website will be made public after the election, revealing the usage ratio of "physical bulletin vs. electronic bulletin." If electronic version traffic continues to rise, future discussions about amending the law to make physical bulletins "optional" may emerge.

Conclusion: Separating Candidates from the Influence of Advertisers

What the election bulletin system does is simple: give every candidate an equally sized page, send it to every voter's household at state expense, do not allow advertisers to intervene, do not allow page space to be bought with money.

This design is cheap. The unit cost of an election bulletin may be less than NT$10, yet it is one of the highest-value components of Taiwan's democratic infrastructure. It ensures that:

• The poorest candidate can still be heard
• The voter least skilled with smartphones can still read candidate information
• No matter how wealthy an advertiser is, they cannot buy space in the bulletin
• What candidates say carries the formal endorsement of a state organ (provided the content is legal and education/experience are truthful)

It does not solve all problems. Wealthy candidates can still amplify their voices through self-funded literature; voters whose registered domicile does not match their actual residence may still not receive it; the ballot number lottery still gives some candidates an advantage; and excessive bulletin information density still deters readers.

But none of this changes the bulletin's role as a minimum guarantee. Its design philosophy is: the state is not responsible for ensuring all candidates are heard equally, but the state is responsible for ensuring all candidates are heard at a minimum level. The rest is left to the candidates themselves, the voters themselves, the market itself.

From 1980 to 2026, this split-stream logic has never changed. If you open that election bulletin this November, flip through a few pages, and toss it in the recycling bin, you are participating in a design choice that has never been overturned in forty-six years — a printed document that separates "what candidates want to say" from the influence of advertisers.

Cheap, unglamorous, overlooked — but it has always been there.

Politics Hub · 2026 九合一選舉 (2026 Nine-in-One Election) · 九合一選舉是什麼 (What Is the Nine-in-One Election) · 中選會制度 (CEC System) · 政治獻金透明度 (Political Donation Transparency) · 村里長制度 (Village Chief System)