Over 100 voters have been found to be registered to commercial properties, vacant buildings and bogus addresses, adding to a growing number of cases of potential voter registration fraud ahead of Hong Kong’s District Council elections.
Pro-Beijing political party DAB inspected the provisional registers of electors and found 131 voters registered to various addresses that are not valid or questionable. These include 19 voters who were registered to addresses in vacant buildings on Peel Street and Graham Street in Central, while two others were registered to Western Court in the Water Street Constituency—a building that has already been torn down.
In the same constituency one voter was registered to 12th floor of Sun On Building, which only has 10 storeys, reported Ming Pao.
49 voters under the Chung Wan constituency in Central and another 49 under the Sheung Wan constituency were registered to commercial properties.
Lawmaker Ip Kwok-him of the DAB said the government should allocate more resources into verifying voter registrations. Measures that can be taken include using data from the Land Registry to check if certain flats exist in buildings registered as voter addresses, he said.
The party also suggested that the government excludes voters who are registered to vacant or dismantled buildings.
Previous cases of suspected voter registration fraud include voters registered to derelict buildings, non-existent floors and a five-star hotel. The growing number of dubious registrations has raised concerns that the “voters” may have been planted to manipulate election results.
