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The following is issued on behalf of the Electoral Affairs Commission:

The Electoral Affairs Commission Chairman, Mr Justice Woo Kwok-hing, said polling for the Election Committee subsector elections had been conducted fairly, openly and honestly.

"My two colleagues in the Commission, Mr Norman Leung Nai-pang and Dr Elizabeth Shing Shiu-ching, and I inspected 20 polling stations throughout the territory to see electoral activities. We are satisfied with the polling arrangements," Mr Justice Woo said at a press briefing after polling ended at 10.30 pm on July 9.

A total of 32,823 voters from 25 subsectors and two sub-subsectors went to the polls. The turnout rate is 19.49 per cent.

"Since the start of the nomination exercise, the Commission has received 39 complaints, 34 of them are received today. The complaints are not of a serious nature. Eighteen of them are about the allocation of polling stations, three about polling arrangements and three about voters' eligibility to vote," he said.

Ballot boxes from 100 polling stations have all been delivered to the central counting station in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre for the count.

Civil servants from various Government departments are in full swing doing the count overnight.

"Counting staff are sorting 27 kinds of ballot papers from each ballot box, verifying ballot paper accounts and keeping proper records. These procedures are time-consuming, but they must be conducted strictly in accordance with relevant regulations. Then the ballot papers will be fed into optical mark readers for the counting of votes obtained by individual candidates," he said.

End/Monday, July 10, 2000

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