Glitch in Hong Kong’s ‘patriots’ District Council election was caused by system overload, investigation finds
Hong Kong Free Press
The technical glitch that marred Hong Kong’s “patriots-only” District Council election in December and forced a switch to paper ballots was caused by a system overload, an investigation has found.
Bernard Man, a member of the Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC) and the chair of the investigation team, said during a press conference last Friday that the investigation group identified “design issues” that caused computation time to increase as polling went along.
The system was “eventually overloaded” at 7.37pm. The “design issues” were a result of changes made by the Registration and Electoral Office (REO)’s technical team to meet the “operational needs” of the District Council election, he said.
“[They] did not fully consider the loading that might be induced to the system during actual operation, and therefore did not conduct sufficient and comprehensive load testing,” Man said in Cantonese.
The changes was meant to introduce “improvements” to the system, Man said while declining to elaborate.
The results of the investigation followed the District Council elections in December, which authorities overhauled to ensure that only those deemed “patriots” could stand.
At around 8.30pm that day, the EAC said there had been a computer glitch and that voting would be done by paper ballot instead. Polling was extended by one and a half hours to midnight owing to the mishap.
The city’s leader John Lee apologised to voters and ordered the EAC to establish an investigation group to probe the incident.
The EAC said on Friday that the investigation did not find evidence of an external attack, adding that only electoral staff can log into the system.
When asked by reporters whether anyone should be held accountable over the incident, Man said the aim of the investigation group was to identify the cause of the mishap and make recommendations.
“As for whether to hold individual institutions or staff members involved accountable, that will be handled by the administrative authorities, ” Man said.
David Lok, the chairperson of the EAC, said it was “not appropriate” for the departments to respond to issues relating to accountability. He added that there would be “established procedures” to handle such issues.
Ballots from prisons omitted
The EAC also revealed during the press conference on Friday that some 2,138 ballots were omitted when determining voter turnout following the computer system failure.
Those ballots were from polling stations set up in prisons and police stations for voters in custody to cast their vote.
Lok, the chairperson of the EAC, said that the votes cast after the system failure were counted manually. “Given the large number of polling stations and due to the tight timeframe for publishing the voter turnout, there was an error in the calculation by the electoral staff concerned, ” Lok said in Cantonese.
He added that the 2,138 ballots had been transported to the main counting stations and were included in the actual counting of votes obtained by each candidate.
“Hence the election result was entirely not affected,” he said.
Around 1.19 million eligible electors cast ballots in the “patriots-only” local election, marking a 27.5 per cent voter turnout – the lowest turnout among all post-colonial elections held in Hong Kong.
Lok said that after including those 2,138 ballots, the voter turnout rate was 27.59 per cent, up from the earlier figure of 27.54 per cent.
The local elections were overhauled in May to ensure only “patriots” were elected, following a pro-democracy landslide in 2019. The number of seats chosen democratically by the public was slashed to around 20 per cent, with the rest chosen by the city’s leader and government-appointed committees. Constituency boundaries were redrawn, the opposition were shut out, and each local council is to be chaired by a government official, similar to colonial-era arrangements. All candidates underwent national security vetting to ensure patriotism, whilst traditional democrats remained behind bars or in self-exile.
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