A law in 1979, a ballot in 1996

The Taiwan Relations Act passed the House 345 to 55 on 13 March 1979 and the Senate 90 to 6 the next day. President Carter signed it on 10 April 1979, effective retroactively to the start of that year. The Act established the American Institute in Taiwan to conduct unofficial relations, committed the United States to provide Taiwan with defensive arms, and declared it American policy that any non-peaceful effort to determine Taiwan's future would be treated as a threat to the peace and a matter of grave concern to the United States.

Seventeen years later, on 23 March 1996, Taiwan held its first direct presidential election. Lee Teng-hui and running mate Lien Chan won with 54.00 percent of the vote, 5,813,699 ballots, on a turnout of 76.04 percent. The election ran during the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait missile crisis, when the United States moved two carrier battle groups into the region rather than let the vote be interrupted.

The distance between the statute and the ballot is the case. A commitment written into American law in 1979, when Taiwan was still governed under martial law, was tested seventeen years later at the exact moment the island tried to complete a transition to full democracy, and it held.

54.00% Lee Teng-hui's share of the vote in Taiwan's first direct presidential election, held during a missile crisis the United States met with two carrier battle groups.

Sources: the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 (Pub. L. 96-8); official 1996 Republic of China presidential election results.

A law in 1979, and the ballot it made possible seventeen years later.