LB2AER
SECRET
DIRECT ELECTIONS
1.
The question of direct elections has been much debated in Hong Kong in the context both of the Basic Law and of
the 1987 review.
This note does not consider the
desirability or otherwise of introducing direct elections
It
or the stage at which they might be introduced.
considers only some of the related issues which might
arise, and methods of resolving them which are being
discussed in various sections of the community at the
present time.
Electoral machinery
2. Hong Kong already has a a well established register of qualified electors, and electoral procedures for direct
elections, which have been used successfully at both
District Board and Urban/Regional Council level. The same
register and procedures (covering polling stations, vote counting, nomination forms, voting papers etc) could be
used for similar elections to the legislature.
3.
The
constituencies same
are used as
basis a
for
elections at both District Board and Urban Council/Regional
Council level.
These could be combined in
configurations to
various
create constituencies for direct
elections to the legislature. The number of constituencies
required would depend on the number of seats in the
legislature to be filled, and on the maximum
maximum size of the
electorate acceptable for each constituency. For example in Hong Kong 3 million people are eligible to be registered as voters. Ten seats would therefore give an average of
300,000 potential voters in each. (At the present time
about 1.5 million are actually registered.)
SECRET