Elections in Hong Kong

Elections are held in Hong Kong when certain offices in the government need to be filled. Every four years, the unicameral Legislative Council of Hong Kong's sixty seats are filled by the electorate.

Hong Kong has a multi-party system, with numerous parties in which no one party often has the chance of gaining power alone. The Chief Executive of Hong Kong is non-partisan, but has to work with several parties to form ("de facto") coalition governments.

Legislative Elections

The Legislative Council has 60 members, of whom 30 are elected by popular vote in geographical constituencies, and 30 elected from functional constituencies (businessmen and professionals).

In Hong Kong, legislative elections are held every four years, in years evenly divisible by four. The most recent election was held 7 September 2008. The next would presumably occur in September 2012.

The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong currently holds a plurality of the seats with ten in the legislature, but they form only sixteen percent of the house. This again stresses the factor that coalitions are often necessary to form governments with legal mandates.

The Liberals hold seven seats, while the Democratic Party holds eight.

Electoral system

The 30 geographical seats of the Legislative Council are returned by proportional representation using the Largest remainder method in each of five constituencies. This system encourages and sustains multiple political parties.

Twenty-three of the 28 functional constituencies use single-member district plurality to elect their members, one (Labour) applies the Block vote(with three seats to be filled), and four, dubbed "special functional constituencies", use the preferential elimination system (aka Instant Runoff Voting).

District Council elections

"Main article: Hong Kong District Council election"

There are eighteen districts, and thus eighteen district councils in Hong Kong, each being a city council for its district. There is one constituency for, on average, every 170,000 residents, as there are 400 constituencies and 6.8 million residents in Hong Kong. A member is elected from each constituency by simple plurality. Since one councillor is elected from each district, there are 400 legislators in the 18 district councils. The Chief Executive can appoint a maximum of 102 members to the councils, and the chairpersons of the 27 rural committees are "ex officio" members of the councils.

Chief Executive elections

According to Article 46 of the constitution (the Basic Law of Hong Kong), elections for the Chief Executive are held every five years. The last was held in 2002, and with the resignation of Tung Chee Hwa an election would have been called on July 10, had the election been contested. A controversial decision by the National People's Congress stated that a resignation did not end a term, so that Donald Tsang would serve only until 2007, rather than 2010 had a term been deemed to begin with each resignation. This is in line with the practice on mainland China. (See Hong Kong Basic Law Article 46.) The 800-member Election Committee held a vote on a day specified by the sitting Chief Executive sometime during the six months of the year prior to the HKSAR's Inauguration Day, July 1. An absolute majority of the votes (ie. 401 votes) are required to be elected; if necessary, a runoff is held between the two top candidates (in terms of electoral votes) on a later date.

In 1997, Tung Chee-Hwa was elected with eighty percent of the electoral votes against two other candidates, Mr. Peter Woo (吳光正) and Sir Ti Liang Yang (楊鐵樑). In 2002, Tung was re-elected uncontested, as he had received 713 signatures of support in the Electoral Committee, and 100 are required for nomination.(Annex I, Section 4, Basic Law)

The 2005 election provided a sense of déjà vu for many, as Donald Tsang cruised to victory with 674 nomination signatures out of a possible 796 (four seats were vacant).

The Election Committee

An 800-member electoral college called the Election Committee is elected by businessmen and professionals (those eligible for functional constituencies, with less than 180 000 eligible voters), with each of the twenty-eight sectors of the economy receiving a set number of electoral votes. The eligible voters in each sector vote directly for the electors, who in turn cast ballots for Chief Executive.

Before 2004, the Electoral College also selected certain members of LegCo by block vote, but this practice has been abolished, in accordance with Ann. 2, Sect. 1, of the Basic Law, and all seats are elected either by universal suffrage or the business elite.

The EC elections are quite irregular. They were held in 1998 and 2000, but none (except for the 2002 by-election) have been held since. The claim in Ann. 1, Sect. 2, of the Basic Law, saying that the Election Committee must be renewed at least once every five years, exposed an interesting flaw in the system that was averted when Tsang was the only candidate nominated.

The problem was that the timing is crucial for the new Chief Executive election after Tung Chee Hwa's resignation on March 12, 2005. Since electoral law states that an election must be held 120 days after the vacancy, an election would be held on the tenth of July. It was unclear as to the exact time period separating the election and the date of taking of office for this Election Committee. If the new EC convened prior to the Chief Executive election, it would be applied to select the next Chief Executive, but otherwise the old Election Committee dating from 2000 would have to complete the task. See Hong Kong Chief Executive election, 2005 for more information on the topic. The second round produces a further dispute, if the term of the old EC ended after the first round of voting but before the second. It would be rather unsensible to use different electors for the two rounds; the same one would probably would have to be prescribed.

Elections of the delegates to the National People's Congress of the PRC

"to be added"

Village Representative elections

The Court of Final Appeal ruled the Secretary for Home Affairs had to consider whether the person elected to represent a village was elected in accordance with electoral arrangements consistent with the Bill of Rights and the Sex Discrimination Ordinance whether to approve an elected Village Representative in December 2000. This decision caused Hong Kong Government to set up new arrangements for Village Representative. There are two types of Village Representatives, namely

(i) Indigenous Inhabitant Representative representing indigenous inhabitants* of an Indigenous Village; and

(ii) Resident Representative representing all residents of an Existing Village

*Indigenous Inhabitant --in relation to an Indigenous Village that existed in 1898 (whether or not the name the Village now has is the same name it had in 1898) means

(i) a person who was in 1898 a resident of the Village; or

(ii) a person who is descended through the male line from a person mentioned in (i).

The first new arrangements Village Representative elections was held in 2003. The next Village Representative elections will held in 2007.

Latest elections

2007 Chief Executive election

2008 Legislative election

Past elections

By-elections

*Hong Kong Island by-election, 2007
*Hong Kong Island by-election, 2000
*Kowloon Central by-election, 1995
*New Territories West by-election, 1992
*New Territories West by-election, 1991

Local elections

ee also

* Electoral calendar
* Politics of Hong Kong
* List of constituencies of Hong Kong
* Election

External links

* [http://www.had.gov.hk/vre/ Hong Kong Government Website]
* [http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/h/hongkong/ Adam Carr's Election Archive]
* [http://www.newyorktimes.com. Elections in Hong Kong/ Roland Nicholson, Jr.]
* [http://www.ln.edu.hk/pgp/level2/pgp-data-f.htm Previous election results by Lingnan University]
* [http://www.elections.gov.hk/elections/legco2004/eindex.html Official site for the 2004 LegCo elections]
* [http://info.gov.hk/eac/index_en.htm Web Site of the Electoral Affairs Commission]