Low Registration Rate for the May Election

Hong Kong SAR will have its first Legislative Council election in the comingMay. According to the new election method, among the 60 seats, 30 will be returned by functional constituencies (FC) and 10 by an election committee (EC), only 20 will be returned by geographical constituencies (GC) throughdirect elections.

In order to boost voter registration, the government spent HK$60 millionin promotion. As a result, 290,000 new GC voters and 25,000 new FC voters havebeen added to the electoral roll.

Concerning the FC registration, the total voter population forthe 28 FC stands at about 148,000, which share about % of the total 230,000people eligible to register as voters. But in three sectors, fewer than 30% of people eligible to vote registered. Mr. Justsice Woo Kwok-hing, chairperson of the Election Affairs Commission, though happy that more people hadregistered, recognized that the response rate for some functional seats was unsatisfied. He also declined to say whether the difficulty in getting newvoters would have any implications for voter turnout in May.

Unfamiliar electoral arrangements, complicated procedures and bad timinghave been blamed for the poor response of FC voters. A provisional legislatoropined that sense of coherence is lacking, with certain constituencyconsisting of voters from various sectors, thus voters in the constituency maybe confused by the new arrangement. Liberal Party member Selina Chow believedmany corporate voters were too occupied with the economic downturn and the complicated registration procedures also put off a lot of potential voters.

Party leaders and academics also expressed disappointment yesterday at thesmall number of voters added to the electoral roll after spending a large sumof money on the campaign. Democratic Party leader Martin Lee said voters knowthe electoral arrangement is unfair and there is no way to choose alegislature with broad representation. Moreover, performance of provisionallegislators has also dampened voters' initiative. Emily Lau of the politicalgroup The Frontier also said that people were discouraged from registration because result of the election were predictable.