Generally the KMT are like the Dems here -- urban, cosmopolitan and ostensibly more sophisticated.
The rubes in Taiwan's equivalent of our flyover country are the ones they thought wouldn't be able to vote.
Sorry, I didn't see the irony.
The new rules (invalidating stamps not inside the box but clearly on the number, face, party, or candidate name) helped the KMT by invalidating many more DPP votes than KMT votes, according to the article. Without the new rules, the KMT would have lost by a larger margin than 30,000, and the number of invalid ballots would have been lower. So, it seems like the new rules helped the KMT.
I also didn't understand why the rates of invalid ballots increased in KMT areas, when DPP voters are more likely to cast invalid ballots.