Taiwan will conduct a huge democratic exercise on Saturday 29, the 9-in-1 local elections for some 11000 public offices, including six special municipalities. Unfortunately I have been so busy with teaching and preparing to examine two PhD theses, that I ran out of time to write a piece before the elections take place. At least I managed to share some thoughts with Austin Ramzy for his report for the New York Times.

On the other hand, there is already such an abundance of excellent analysis from a variety of angles, that my missing .02 will not be noticed. As usual, the blogs of Michael Turton, Ben Goren and Michael Cole have pretty much everything covered. And the CPI blog that I edit has the views of more than a dozen Taiwan specialists (including heavy hitters like Shelley Rigger, Dafydd Fell and John Keane).

On Twitter, there are a number of people to look out for, including: @austinramzy @JMichaelCole1 @michaelturton @ehundman @bangaoren @michalthim @focustaiwan and @jonlsullivan. Polls close at 4pm in Taiwan (that’s 8am UK time) and counts will start coming soon thereafter, although actual results might not be known until late in the evening. You can follow the counts live here (Many thanks to Ben for sharing this link with me).