Print Friendly, PDF & Email

The Election Committee subsector elections held on 19 September, 2021 was a far cry from the 2016 polls, in terms of size of the electorate, with a 97 per cent drop in registered voters.

By Pak Hei Leung & Christopher James Lee

Under the new electoral framework imposed by the National People’s Congress (NPC), the 2021 Election Committee subsector ordinary elections saw a 97 per cent decrease in registered voters.

A total of 7,891 voters registered for the 2021 Election Committee election, among whom only 4,889 had to vote, since the rest of the subsectors were uncontested. There were 246,440 registered voters in the last election held in 2016. A total of 412 candidates contest 364 out of the 1,500 seat.

Over 300 people queued outside the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre to watch the vote counting process at 5:45 pm.
Members of the Federation of Hong Kong and Kowloon Labour Unions (HKFLU), the third largest trade union in Hong Kong, distributed leaflets near the Immigration Tower in Wan Chai.
Secretary of Security Chris Tang Ping-keung arrived at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition
Centre at 4:45pm.
The first batch of ballots arrived at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre at 7:10 pm.

Electoral Affairs Commission chairman Barnabas Fung Wah apologized for the delay in the announcement of results and admitted the process of vote counting was “unsatisfactory”. Fung expected all results to be announced at around 8am the next day. It took almost 14 hours to finish counting 4,380 votes.

He explained that the problem lied with ballot verification papers – there were human errors with the frontline staff, causing discrepancies on the fill-in ballot paper account.

The Electoral Affairs Commission announced at 8:55 pm that the public gallery has reached full capacity.
Electoral Affairs Commission chairman Barnabus Fung Wah and Constitutional and Mainland Affairs chief Erick Tsang Kwok-wai opened the first ballot box at 9:10 pm.


Edited by Mandy YIM

SHARE
Previous articleA Neighbourhood Complying with the Trend of Times
Next articleA Cantonese Fan from London