Elections

Section 1	Eligibility to Vote and Qualifications for Registration
Section 2	The Registration Drive
Section 3	The Provisional Register and Final Register of GCs for 1999
Section 4	Allocation of Electors to District Council Constituencies
Section 5	The Register for the DC Election

2.1

For the first DC election held on 28 November 1999, the DC Ordinance provides that only a registered elector whose name appears on the existing final register ("FR") of geographical constituencies ("GCs") compiled and published by the Electoral Registration Officer ("ERO") on or before 31 March 1999 under the Legislative Council Ordinance ("LegCo Ordinance") is eligible to vote.

2.2

To qualify for registration as an elector for a GC on the 1999 FR, an individual had to satisfy the following requirements under the LegCo Ordinance: (a) he had reached the age of 18 years as at 31 March 1999; (b) he was a permanent resident of Hong Kong; (c) he ordinarily resided in Hong Kong and the residential address in his application for registration was his only or principal residence in Hong Kong; (d) he held an identity document or had applied for a new or a replacement identity document; and (e) he was not disqualified from being registered as an elector.

2.3

The registration deadline for inclusion in the 1999 final register was 16 January 1999. About one month before this deadline, a number of government bureaux and departments joined together to launch a comprehensive registration drive which mainly aimed at encouraging eligible members of the public to register as electors and reminding registered electors to report any change of their addresses if they had moved. Insofar as registration of electors was concerned, emphasis was placed on young people in the age group of 18 to 25 as registration rate in this group had all along been low. The Working Group on Publicity set up under the EAC played an active role by overseeing the efforts of these government bureaux and departments in the planning and implementation of publicity and promotional activities in support of the registration drive. A host of activities were conducted through television and radio programmes, announcements in public interest, newspaper advertisements and posters. Registration counters were also set up at popular locations and household visits were conducted in areas with new private residential premises.

2.4

A total of about 160,000 registration application forms were returned to the Registration and Electoral Office ("REO") by the registration deadline of 16 January 1999. The number of new electors recruited was 92,000, of which 46,000 were young voters in the age group of 18 to 25.

2.5	The provisional register ("PR") of electors was published on 12 February 1999. It included the particulars of (a) those electors whose names appeared in the register published in March 1998, updated and corrected by the REO based on reported or available information; and (b) the eligible new applicants who had applied for registration on or before 16 January 1999.
2.6	At the same time when the PR was published, an omissions list was also published. The list contained the names and particulars of persons who were formerly registered in the 1998 FR but were not included in the 1999 PR and proposed to be omitted from the 1999 FR. These were persons with whom the ERO was satisfied on reasonable grounds that they were disqualified or no longer eligible to be registered, e.g. because they had passed away or they were believed to have moved but their new principal residential address was unknown to the ERO.
2.7	Both the PR and the omissions list were available for public inspection between 12 February and 1 March 1999. During this period, any member of the public might lodge with the ERO an objection regarding any entry in the PR. An applicant whose application for registration had been rejected, or a person whose name had been included in the omissions list, might also lodge a claim in respect of his/her own case or omission. By the deadline of 1 March 1999, a total of four claims concerning permanent resident status had been received. They were forwarded to the Revising Officer, a member of the Judiciary, for consideration and determination. The Revising Officer allowed three of them and dismissed one. The ERO also took the opportunity to seek and obtain the Revising Officer's approval to add the names of 54 persons into the FR. These were persons whose applications for registration had been rejected on the ground that they were not permanent residents of Hong Kong. They should, however, be included in the FR because the ERO received confirmation from the Immigration Department after the publication of the PR that they had become permanent residents.
2.8	The FR of electors was published on 26 March 1999. It contains a total of 2,832,524 electors. A profile of their age and sex is at Appendix I.

2.9

The DC Ordinance requires that for the first DC election, the ERO must allocate an elector to a District Council constituency ("DCC") according to his/her residential address as recorded in the FR and an elector may only vote in that DCC. As soon as the delineation of the 390 DCCs for the first DC election was declared by the Chief Executive in Council on 25 May 1999, REO started to allocate each of the 2.83 million electors to one of the 390 DCCs according to their addresses as recorded in the FR published on 26 March 1999. By the end of July 1999, the allocation exercise was completed.

2.10

To provide an early opportunity for electors to check whether they had been allocated to the correct DCC, REO sent each elector in early August 1999 a notice informing him/her of the DCC to which he/she had been allocated and the polling station which he/she had to attend to cast his/her vote at the DC election in November. Shortly after the notices were issued, the REO received advice from some electors about misallocation of DCCs. In most of these cases, the electors concerned were living in remote rural villages the exact locations of which were not accurately shown on the map the REO staff used for the allocation exercise. The REO was able to rectify all these cases immediately and the electors concerned were also duly informed of their correct DCC and polling station well before the election. There was however one case which was brought to the REO's attention only after the election. In this case, a rural village had been delineated into a DCC since 1994 according to its location indicated on the map then in use. All electors with addresses bearing the name of the village had been allocated to that DCC ever since. In actual fact, however, the village straddles two DCCs. This means that some of the electors living in the village should have been allocated to the neighbouring DCC. The REO was not aware of this misallocation until the Complaints Committee ("CC") of the EAC received a complaint from a candidate. The number of electors involved, however, had no effect on the election result of either DCC. The EAC will, in its next review of the DCC boundaries for the 2003 DC election, consult the villagers involved as to whether they prefer the status quo, i.e. to continue to belong to the DCC to which they had been allocated, or an re-allocation to the neighbouring DCC, since they have never raised any complaints regarding the present allocation.

2.11

The register for DC election was published on 24 September 1999. It was available for public inspection at REO and the District Offices. Having regard to the growing public sentiments towards protection of personal data, the register for DC election contains only the electors' name and address but not the identity card number or sex as the previous registers of electors did. As nothing has shown that this new arrangement has in any way compromised the integrity and transparency of the register, the EAC considers it desirable to continue with such arrangement in future registers of electors.