In the elections for the renewal of the Legislative Council – in which only “patriotic” candidates can stand since 2021 – the pro-Beijing authorities also want to introduce special “smart ballot boxes” next year, which would warn voters of any “error” that they have committed when completing the ballot. A new form of psychological pressure.
Hong Kong () – “Smart ballot boxes” to warn voters if they are casting their vote incorrectly. In Hong Kong’s increasingly surreal electoral process, the local administration is studying the possibility of introducing this “innovation” in view of the renewal of the Legislative Council (LegCo), the local Parliament whose four-year term expires in 2025.
It is worth recapping what the LegCo elections have already become, since the crackdown imposed by Beijing to suppress the 2019 pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong. After the postponement (officially due to the pandemic) of the elections scheduled for 2020, on December 19, 2021 the vote was carried out with the main leaders of the opposition forces in prison for having organized primary elections to try to form a coalition and win in all electoral districts (the only way to obtain a majority, given that a large part of LecCo’s seats were reserved for representatives appointed by pro-Beijing bodies). And in those elections only candidates loyal to the line imposed on Hong Kong by Xi Jinping were admitted.
That is why it was not a surprise that in the 2021 elections voting participation was reduced to 30.2% of voters, 28 percentage points less than in the previous elections in 2016, in which it was still possible to express a different opinion , despite the fact that they had imposed a system in which the head of the executive was anyway appointed from above. And even among the approximately 1,350,000 voters who went to the polls, there were 27,495 (just over 2%) who returned their ballot with a null vote, thus expressing their dissent in another way.
Now John Lee’s government in Hong Kong also seems to want to prevent this possibility, through – precisely – “smart ballot boxes”, equipped with a special scanner that, before inserting the ballot, would signal to the voter that it has not been filled out correctly. Obviously All of this is presented as an additional “service” to avoid errors when filling out the ballot. But so much diligence in a system undermined at its roots by the impossibility of voting freely has raised suspicions even among some of the members of the current LegCo, who just a few months ago voted unanimously in favor of greater repression with the approval of the new version of the National Security Law according to Article 23 of the Basic Law of Hong Kong.
In the debate, doubts were raised about respect for the secrecy of the vote and the possibility of opting for a blank vote. Objections to which the Secretary of Constitutional Affairs and Relations with Mainland China, Erick Tsang, responded by stating that the scanners would not be able to associate the ballots with the voter and their identity card, thus denying the existence of the problem. And today Chief Executive John Lee also told reporters that the election will be held “in a manner that voters will find the arrangements satisfactory” and that a decision will be made in March.
It should be remembered that in Hong Kong even the simple act of propagandizing in favor of a null vote is a crime. In this context, it seems clear that “smart ballot boxes” would function as another instrument of psychological pressure to discourage even the most hidden forms of dissent.
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