“6.22 Civil Referendum” Formal and Subsidiary Polling Stations and Arrangement of Preliminary Results AnnouncementBack

As of 5 pm today, after close to 150 hours of operation for the “6.22 Civil Referendum” organized by the Public Opinion Programme (POP) of The University of Hong Kong and the Centre for Social Policy Studies (CSPS) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the offsite electronic system has recorded a total of 696,732 votes, together with the 49,792 onsite electronic votes and 827 paper votes, giving a total of 747,351 votes together. Since offsite voters can vote again at the onsite polling stations which involve a more vigorous identity verification, repeated votes will be eliminated before ballot counting, hence the number of final votes will be lower than the raw figures announced. The minimum number of votes now stands at 696,732 while the maximum is 747, 351, that is between 700,000 and 750,000. Regarding repeated voting, the votes cast at onsite polling stations shall prevail in the final vote count, while the first paper ballot submitted to the system shall prevail for repeated paper ballots, POP will announce the exact number of repeated votes.

June 29 (this Sunday) will be the last day of the “6.22 Civil Referendum”, POP will open 14 formal polling stations and 7 subsidiary polling stations in Hong Kong to let citizens vote in person, the opening time will be 10 am to 10 pm. The 21 polling stations are as follows:

Due to limited resources, subsidiary stations can only provide paper ballots, but there will be electronic voting service point at each station helping citizens to vote using their own mobile phones. POP will provide station guidelines while all subsidiary polling stations will be operated by the OCLP secretariat.。

POP tentatively plan to hold a press conference on June 29 at 11 pm at The University of Hong Kong to announce to the press the preliminary results, that is, the results of offsite electronic votes and onsite electronic votes, while the paper ballot counting will be kicked off then. If the number is within several thousands, the results are expected to be ready the following day (June 30), details to be announced.

Robert Ting-yiu Chung, Director of POP, remarks, “The Civil Referendum restores to normal now, the turnout goes down from tens of thousands to hundreds per hour, which is very normal, that means almost all citizens who wish to express their opinions via the Civil Referendum could express their opinions in a peaceful and rational manner. POP would remain neutral to the voting motions and results, we hope that people from different parties, including those hackers who mobilized cyber-attacks, officials who threaten citizens by speeches, people who disturbed voters physically and media who used misinformation to smear against the event, will all understand the good deeds that Civil Referendum can do in solving social disputes.”