JEFFIE LAM AND JOYCE NG
PUBLISHED : Friday, 25 September, 2015, 12:00am
UPDATED : Friday, 25 September, 2015, 12:00am
Election commissioner Mr Justice Barnabas Fung Wah. Photo: Jonathan Wong
Only 10 of 2,000 complaints about problematic voter registrations were eventually passed to police for investigation, according to the election watchdog which officially launches the finalised electoral roll on Friday.
Political parties and some members of the public have filed hundreds of complaints regarding the provisional electoral roll ahead of the district council elections in November, including cases where some residents of homes for the elderly had apparently been registered without their approval.
Chief electoral officer Li Pak-hong, of the Registration and Electoral Office, said on Thursday some 550 cases were eventually retracted by complainants while the city's courts had turned down almost 80 per cent of the remaining objections.
Of the 299 cases that were eventually removed from electoral roll, Li said 280 voters had moved away from their registered address and were not contactable. Ten suspicious cases were passed to police.
Political parties have urged the watchdog to increase its manpower and run more detailed checks to avoid a repeat of the vote-rigging scandals unearthed in the district council elections four years ago.
Election commissioner Mr Justice Barnabas Fung Wah said the watchdog would soon conduct an evaluation with the government on the current registration scheme, which was a lenient system that relied on applicants' honesty yet encouraged registration.
"Do we want a strict system that might create disturbances or a lenient one that would be more convenient?" asked Fung.
"It is a matter of give and take that should be discussed in the society."
Meanwhile, the Civic Party will field 25 hopefuls in the November elections - 12 of them first-time candidates.
Some are considering contesting middle-class neighbourhoods which have more supporters of the pan-democratic camp, such as Kornhill in Eastern district, while others may challenge incumbents from the pro-establishment camp in traditional Beijing-loyalist strongholds such as North Point.
Party chairwoman Audrey Eu Yuet-mee said: "This will be the first election since Occupy Central. The results will be telling [of the political landscape] to some extent."
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/1861192/only-tiny-number-suspicious-voter-cases-hong-kong-passed
