Election chief says sorry over vote counting delay

Electoral Affairs Commission chairman Barnabas Fung Wah apologized after it took almost 14 hours for the commission to count 4,380 ballots for the Election Committee election. 

He said on Monday morning that he was very sorry for the delay in the announcement of the Election Committee election results.

He admitted that the process of vote counting was “unsatisfactory,” adding that the time needed "far exceeded reasonable expectations."

Meeting reporters at 6am this morning, he said he initially expected all results to be announced at around midnight – or six hours after voting ended.

The full results, with only 4,380 ballot papers had to be tallied, were announced at around 8am. The results of the first sub-sector – involving around 50 votes – did not come until 3am. 

Fund said initial findings showed that there were human errors or errors of judgment with the front-line staff.

As of 6am, 12 hours after the voting came to a close, 10 out of 13 subsectors in the Election Committee had their results announced.

The electoral affairs chief also said there were problems with the ballot verification papers.

"The problem mainly lies with the hand fill-in ballot paper account – there are some minor discrepancies," he told reporters.

"We're looking into the problem as to whether counting could still be conducted side-by-side with the reconciliation of the ballot paper account."

Fung insisted the problem had nothing to do with the electronic voter registrar or the automatic counting system, saying they mostly worked smoothly except for the jamming of the counting paper a few times.

Fung pledged a thorough review of the problem and a report will be filed to the Chief Executive.