March 1998

Voter registration campaign

Titanic costs for Tom Thumb gains

By Samantha Wong

The voter registration campaign for the first Legislative Council election of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is over. The $60 million campaign has generally received negative feedback for limited achievements at great expense.

The response in functional constituencies is widely agreed to have been apathetic. Nevertheless, for the geographical constituencies, some analysts said the registration rate was not bad.

Mr. Robert Chung Ting Yiu, a research officer at the Social Sciences Research Centre of the University of Hong Kong, thinks the registration rate for the geographical constituencies was “satisfactory numerically”.

Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa stumbled during an election campaign ceremony, an incident interpreted as a bad omen for the registration rate.

Courtesy of Express News

Said Mr. Choy Chi Keung, a lecturer in the Division of Social Studies at the City University of Hong Kong: “There were large scale registration campaigns in 1991 and 1995, and so the registration in geographical elections has almost reached the maximum.”

However, potential political candidates think the result was far from satisfactory.

Ms Emily Lau Wai Hing of The Frontier said people thought it would be meaningless to vote since the results were predictable.

A former Democratic Party member, Mr. Sin Chun Kai, plans to contest the Information Technology seat. He said the campaigns for the two types of constituencies were treated with partiality. “The campaign for functional constituencies started too late,” said he. “Some only received the registration forms after Christmas.”

The change in the functional constituencies requires the electors to register again and corporate electors to appoint authorized representatives.

“Voters in the functional constituencies are not clear about the system and find appointing authorized representatives time-con-suming,” said Mr. Choy.

Mr. Choy said many peo-ple do not know whether they can vote in functional con-stituencies, while others do not know one voter can have up to three votes.

He said the resources should rather have been spent on informing the public.

While the registration campaign for the functional constituencies was criticized for having insufficient resources, the one for the geographical constituencies was criticized for spending too much.

The door-to-door visits by 30,000 voter registration ambassadors from 6 to 12 December 1997 was the largest scale activity in the campaign.

However, Miss Agatha Ng, 18, an ambassador who worked in Ho Man Tin, found the campaign poorly organized.

“Our workload was unreasonably light,” said Miss Ng. “Our team only had to visit two buildings in two days. But many people, about 70 percent, were not at home. We had nothing to do but wait for reporting the results.

“People who wanted to register had already registered in the early stage. There was no need to employ so many people to work so long a day for such a long period of time.”

She also found the supervision of their work inadequate.

“The Home Affairs Department did not know what we did, and some of us went shopping during the visits,” said Miss Ng.

Mr. Chung thought more resources should be allocated to promote the electoral system and promote reasons why people should take part.

“There should be complete civil education to awake the consciousness of democracy,” said Mr. Chung.

The experience of voter registration ambassadors reflected a need for education on elections.

Said Miss Iris Lo, 19, an ambassador in Sha Tin: “Some people did not know what they would vote for. Some did not know whether they had to register again or whether they had to change their addresses if they moved.”

Mr. Chung said an automatic registration system would save a great deal of work.

“Under this system, people who hold permanent identity cards would become eligible voters,” explained Mr. Chung.

Concluded Mr. Choy: “I can think of nothing for the Government to do to boost the registration rate.”

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