Taiwan's election body is weighing whether three opposition-backed referendums will join the year-end local elections, a move that would drag vote counting into the small hours and strain election staff.

• The Central Election Commission will decide on Aug 28 whether to approve three referendums passed by the opposition-controlled legislature: scrapping the nuclear-free homeland policy, adding caning as a punishment, and earmarking traffic fine revenue.
• The review was pushed back a week because the legislature's paperwork arrived late, leaving too little time to prepare.
• Commission chair Yu Ying-lung expects counting to run until 1 or 2 a.m. if all three go on the ballot, compared with a 11:40 p.m. finish at the last local elections.
• The commission is pushing back hard against a KMT bill to print multiple referendum questions on a single ballot, calling it rushed and damaging to election administration.
• Commission officials have visited all three party caucuses to ask lawmakers to shelve that bill and study it properly first.

Outlook: The Aug 28 decision sets how crowded the year-end ballot gets, with the single-ballot fight likely to continue in the legislature.