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Hong Kong elections
Hong KongPolitics

How it all went wrong in counting votes for key Hong Kong Election Committee poll

  • It took 9 hours for authorities to announce results for first of 13 Election Committee subsectors, one that involved just 55 votes
  • Marathon vote count drew ire of candidates and left electoral officials, government with red faces

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It was a long night for staff at the vote counting station. Photo: Sam Tsang
Natalie Wong
From document delivery and cross-checking of ballots to paper jams in vote-counting machines – whatever could go wrong in Hong Kong’s first poll under the Beijing-decreed electoral overhaul went wrong, leading to a 14-hour wait for the results.
It took nine hours for electoral authorities overseeing the poll for the powerful Election Committee to announce the results for the first of 13 subsectors, one that involved just 55 votes. Another five hours lapsed before counting of all 4,380 ballot papers in the 13 subsectors was completed.

Beijing has hailed it as a “symbolic” election, with a spokesman from the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office highlighting the community’s recognition of the revamped system, and the central government’s liaison office saying it helped lay down the new political ground rules.

But the marathon vote count drew the ire of candidates, placed the administration of Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor in an embarrassing position, and puzzled many who had been proud of civil servants’ famed efficiency.

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While Electoral Affairs Commission chairman Barnabas Fung Wah apologised for the “unreasonable” delay, attributing it to the first-time use of an electronic voter register and inflexibility of counting staff, the Post uncovered other issues that also marred the “patriots-only” poll.

They ranged from questionable votes to poor communications on site, according to candidates and electoral officials who had kept a close watch on the process at the central counting station in the Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai

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