Fewer voters to elect election committee members amid electoral changes

Only 7,900 people registered as voters for electing members to the Election Committee, a plunge of 97 percent following electoral changes.

The Election Committee subsector provisional register of voters was released yesterday by the Registration and Electoral Office, which contains 7,891 voters, comprising 2,547 individual and 5,344 corporate voters. The number has dropped by 97 percent from the original 250,000 voters before the electoral changes to a mere 7,891 who will elect Election Committee members later on September 19.

Newly-introduced subsectors under the electoral changes saw nearly 2,000 new registered voters.

However, subsectors that were previous strongholds of the pro-democracy camp, including the medical and health services subsector, accounting subsector and education subsector, saw the number of voters plummeted.

For the education subsector, the number of voters fell from over 100,000 to around 1,700, while the 1,700 voters has already made the subsector with the most number of corporate voters, making up 32 percent of the total number of corporate voters.

This was after the electoral changes merged the education subsector and higher education subsectors, and scrapped individual votes, which was replaced by corporate votes.

That would mean teachers will no longer be able to vote individually, but only schools and educational institutions will be able to elect Election Committee members.

Political scientist Ivan Choy Chi-keung said the electorate base has actually shrunk despite the subsector having the most number of voters, and elected candidates might not be able to represent the mainstream opinion education sector.

On the other hand, Choy said the new electoral system ignores representativeness or interest of different sectors, and only makes sure the election outcome goes as planned, therefore the emergence of pro-Beijing organizations as voters are not surprising to him.

According to the voters’ register, the Hong Kong Chilled Meat and Poultry Association has registered as a voter in the newly-added grassroot associations subsector.

Kwok Shi-hing, chairman of the association, said he found his association ineligible to register in other subsectors, therefore registered in the grassroot associations subsector.

“The association is a major stakeholder in Hong Kong as it imports the majority of chilled meat, and therefore should be allowed to vote,” Kwok said.

As he was asked whether the association will represent grassroot citizens or the interest of the trade, Kwok said chilled meat heavily affects grassroot citizens as it is cheaper than fresh meat, therefore the association also represents grassroot citizens.

After the electoral changes passed by Legco in May, eligibility of voters were tightened in most subsectors. A special voter registration was put in place to deal with voters who saw their eligibility affected, which ended July 5.

Apart from electing the Chief Executive, Election Committee members will also hold 40 of the total 90 seats in the Legislative Council, and be responsible for nominating candidates in other constituencies after the electoral changes.