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

     The 2025 Legislative Council General Election (LCGE) will be held on December 7 (Sunday). The Registration and Electoral Office (REO) has arranged in the past few weeks a number of briefings and training sessions for electoral staff responsible for different duties to enhance their understanding of the polling and counting procedures and various details. The Chairman of the Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC), Mr Justice David Lok, inspected three of these briefings and training sessions, which took place on October 27, yesterday (November 18) and today (November 19) respectively, to see for himself the preparatory work by electoral staff.

     Today's hands-on practice was designed for the electoral staff responsible for counting duties for functional constituencies (FCs) at the Central Counting Station (CCS) on the polling day. The electronic counting system was introduced for the first time for the FCs in the 2025 LCGE, with the aim of ensuring that the election will be conducted openly, honestly and fairly, while at the same time applying technology to enhance the counting efficiency. Today's practice, arranged by the REO, primarily provided the relevant staff with enhanced training and joint drills, covering hands-on practices on each step of the entire process from the arrival of ballot boxes at the CCS to the completion of counting, as well as the fallback contingency measures, to ensure that the counting process will be conducted in an accurate and efficient manner.

     As for yesterday, the REO conducted a training session for the staff responsible for issuing ballot papers and counting duties for geographical constituencies (GCs) at the normal polling-cum-counting stations, enabling them to familiarise themselves with issuing ballot papers using the Electronic Poll Register System and its fallback mode, as well as the manual counting process for GCs, thereby ensuring that they fully understand the arrangements of the polling-cum-counting stations.

     The staff participating in the briefing on October 27 are mainly responsible for counting duties for the Election Committee constituency (ECC) on the polling day. Representatives from the REO briefed the staff on the counting workflow and the electronic counting system to be adopted for the ECC, followed by a demonstration on the operation of the counting machine and the relevant system to enhance the staff's knowledge of the counting duties for that constituency.

     Mr Justice Lok said after the inspection today that the recent briefings and series of training sessions could effectively enhance the staff's knowledge of the relevant workflow and system operations. He thanked the staff wholeheartedly for their hard work and encouraged them to continue to exert themselves to enable smooth polling and counting on the polling day.

     EAC members Professor Daniel Shek and Mr Bernard Man, SC, also inspected the briefing on October 27 and the hands-on practice today with Mr Justice Lok.

     After the close of poll of the 2025 LCGE, a majority of the Ordinary Polling Stations will be converted into counting stations immediately for the counting of GC votes, while the ballot boxes of all FCs and the ECC will be delivered to the CCS at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre for counting with the electronic counting system. As the polling and counting arrangements involve multiple procedures, the REO will continue to arrange more training sessions and simulation exercises for the electoral staff to enhance their co-ordination and response capabilities for making a detailed and comprehensive preparation for the LCGE.

Ends/Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Issued at HKT 20:35

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