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Electors told to ignore electoral mails

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The Chief Electoral Officer, Mr Li Wing, today (August 20) called on electors in the five geographical constituencies to ignore the mails relating to electoral arrangements that they might have received from the Registration and Electoral Office (REO) in these two days.

"During random checks of the introductory leaflets of candidates delivered to us by the Government Logistics Department, we spotted that a small portion of these leaflets, which were to be included in the mailing packages, were incorrectly bounded," Mr Li said.

In order to avoid causing any possible confusion to any electors, the Office decided immediately to call a halt to the mailing exercise and informed electors to ignore the mails that they might have already received.

Mr Li offered his sincere apology to all electors who might have received the wrongly bounded leaflets.

The Office started to send out the electoral packages on August 17 after initial random checks on the leaflets did not reveal any problems.

These mails, numbering about 290,000, are expected to reach the electors these two days.

Because of the large volume of leaflets involved, the Government Logistics Department had to farm out the printing work in batches to a number of contractors.

"We found out in ensuing checks that 12 out of 30,000 leaflets inspected were incorrectly bounded," Mr Li said.

"In view of this, we have decided to conduct full-scale check on all the introductory leaflet of candidates before we start to send out the electoral mails again."

Despite this, the REO will ensure that all electoral mails can reach the electors before the statutory deadline, that is 10 days before the polling day on September 12.

All the introductory leaflets of candidates in the new mailing packages will carry a chop to indicate that they have been inspected.

Mr Li also gave the assurance that, as a usual practice, each and every ballot paper would be checked beforehand.

Ends/Friday, August 20, 2004

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