Taiwan's year-end ballot will carry only one of three opposition-backed referendum questions, a decision critics call legally sound on two counts but politically convenient on the third.

• The KMT and TPP pushed three referendums: scrapping the nuclear-free homeland goal, adding caning as a punishment, and earmarking traffic fines for road improvements. Only the nuclear one passed review.
• Blocking the caning question was the right call — putting it into practice would mean rewriting the criminal code, and it clashes with international human rights treaties.
• The traffic-fine question is also really a lawmaking matter, and the same parties voted down an earlier bill doing exactly that.
• Letting the nuclear question through looks like a move to avoid a fight with the opposition majority in parliament, since environmental law already sets the phaseout goal and could simply be amended.
• The wider complaint: referendums exist to fill gaps in representative government, and lawmakers who already hold the power to change the law are passing the job to voters instead.

Outlook: The nuclear-phaseout repeal heads to voters at the year-end election, keeping Taiwan's energy policy a central campaign fight.