Hong Kong minister slams Registration and Electoral Office’s handling of missing 2016 voter registry as ‘unacceptable’
- Office still searching for personal data of about 8,000 voters
- Lawmaker leads protest at election body’s headquarters
It was unacceptable for Hong Kong electoral officers to have kept residents and officials in the dark for over two years about a lost register containing the personal data of about 8,000 voters, the city’s constitutional affairs minister said on Saturday.
Patrick Nip Tak-kuen spoke a day after the Registration and Electoral Office (REO) said it was “conducting a thorough search” for a register of electors used at a polling station in Tsing Yi during the 2016 Legislative Council election, following media reports that the item had been lost.
Nip said both he and the chief electoral officer who headed the REO had only recently learned of the incident.
“It shows that there are problems with the REO’s administration,” Nip said, adding that the office’s handling of the matter was “definitely unacceptable”.
“In the past two years, the register has not been found and there has not been any announcement – this must be problematic,” Nip said.
The REO is a government department that executes the decisions of the Electoral Affairs Commission, an independent statutory body. It handles matters such as voter registration and the organisation of local polls.
