Update | Virtual vote on universal suffrage draws 62,000
Most use a mobile phone app to answer the poll on 2017 chief executive election arrangements; Voters wait an hour at Victoria Park
More than 62,000 people cast their ballots in the New Year Civil Referendum Project on constitutional reform held on Wednesday.
When the poll drew to a close at 6.30pm, a total of 62,169 had cast their votes. Most of them, 40,234, voted through a mobile phone application, and 19,164 did it on the organisers’ website. 2,771 voted in person at the poll stations.
The turnout had hit 10,000 at 10am, eight hours into the poll’s opening on the website and mobile app. The number went further to 35,996 at 2pm when the poll station at Victoria Park was open. It increased to 41,082 at 3pm when the New Year’s Day march started.
Many voters had to wait about one hour in a queue before they could cast their ballots at Victoria Park. Their queue stretched all the way to near Tin Hau.
The exercise, commissioned by the Occupy Central movement and conducted by academics at the University of Hong Kong and the Polytechnic University, is considered a warm-up for a larger-scale mock referendum on constitutional reform in June.
I support universal suffrage, but events in the past have left me feeling disappointed and pessimistic
The pollsters asked citizens three questions: whether the nominating committee to pick candidates for Hong Kong's chief executive should be made “more representative”; whether there should be “pre-screening” for candidates; and whether the public should be given the right to nominate candidates.
