TNAG-1442-FCO40-1926-Constitutional-development-in-Hong-Kong-1986 — Page 99

LB2AER

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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.)

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