Political situation
Written by: Lin Jian
2021-04-06 07:00
Last update date: 2021-04-06 07:00
The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress passed a resolution to drastically revise the Hong Kong electoral system. Some democrats and their supporters are dissatisfied with the decline in electoral democracy and are brewing boycott elections.
However, the Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs, Zeng Guowei, and the Secretary for Justice, Zheng Ruohua, have mentioned that they will "study whether the current system is adequate" to deal with the phenomenon of vain votes, which has caused controversy.
Voting has always been regarded as a kind of civil rights, and voters have the free will to vote or not to vote for designated candidates.
However, Zheng Ruohua described voting as a "citizen responsibility" in a TV interview.
In fact, making voting as a responsibility/obligation and compulsory voting for voters are implemented in many countries or regions in the world, and some of them belong to Western democracies.
What's interesting is that there is a country in the world with a voter turnout rate of 99.98%. As for whether the acceptance has improved as a result, everyone is "careful."
In Hong Kong, the government actually studied compulsory voting arrangements in the early days of the reunification, but in the end it was not implemented due to many practical problems.
Today, due to the special political background, the government does not want the voter turnout of the new system to drop drastically. Democrats will use this to continue dealing with the government. Therefore, the issue of mandatory voting may be reopened for discussion.
Of course, it is not that simple to restore the citizens' confidence in the entire voting system...
There are also elections in North Korea, and it is a mandatory vote, but I believe that no one would dare not vote for the "great leader" Kim Jong Un.
(AP/profile picture)
North Korea implemented the most thorough turnout rate of 99.98%
Speaking of mandatory voting, I believe most people will think of dictatorships such as North Korea: nominally there are elections, but in fact power is firmly controlled by the Labor Party, and the law requires citizens over 17 to vote.
In each "Supreme People's Assembly" and local elections, there is only one candidate's name on the ballot for each constituency, and voters do not need to stamp their ballots, as long as they put the ballot in the ballot box, it is considered a vote of yes.
Therefore, if voters dare not to vote for the "great leader", they will definitely be discovered, and they will be followed by the secret police, arrested on charges, "disappeared", "mentally ill", etc. Each time the voter turnout rate has reached more than 99% (extremely A small number of people cannot vote due to factors such as being overseas).
The voter turnout in the 2019 regional elections reached 99.98%, and the "Supreme People's Assembly" even reached 99.99%.
After the ruling authority wins, it can claim to the outside world that it has a very high support rate in the country.
21 countries around the world adopt compulsory voting to cover democracies such as Australia and Greece
But apart from these extreme examples, in fact, individual democratic countries or regions will also have mandatory voting arrangements.
The supporter’s view is that voting is the same as paying taxes, which is the obligation of the people. Compulsory voting can increase citizens’ participation in society. Public officials elected by voting also have the motivation to care about those who are politically inactive.
If the voter turnout is too low, it will also affect the overall acceptability of the election.
According to statistics from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), currently 21 countries around the world implement mandatory voting, or mandatory voting within a specified age range. If voters do not follow, they will be fined or even imprisoned.
In addition to North Korea mentioned above, other authoritarian countries, such as Singapore, and relatively democratic countries such as Belgium, Greece, and Australia, also implement mandatory voting.
Among them, in Australia, voters who do not vote will receive an inquiry letter from the government. If they fail to provide a reasonable explanation such as illness or being overseas, they will need to pay a fine of 20 Australian dollars (about 118.5 Hong Kong dollars).
If the fine is not paid within the time limit, the amount will continue to increase and the person must also go to court.
In some extreme cases, if the person refuses to pay the fine for a long time, there is a chance that he will have to go to jail.
Of course, each country's implementation situation is different, and the degree of lenient and tightness is also different. For example, although Belgium stipulates that those who do not comply with the voting obligation will be fined, it is actually less implemented, so the voter turnout rate will not be 100%.
In the local 2019 general election, the final turnout rate was 90.01%.
However, the implementation of this system can increase the motivation of voters to vote in any case, which is always much higher than the current Hong Kong Legislative Council general election (the highest record of direct elections for regional general elections is 2016, 58.28%).
In the early years of the reunification, the Hong Kong government had studied but the underlying issues were extremely complicated
In Hong Kong, mandatory voting arrangements were discussed within the government in the early days of the reunification.
In the 1998 election of the first Legislative Council, the final turnout rate was 53.29%. There are opinions in the political circles that this number needs to be improved.
At that time, the government had studied the inclusion of mandatory voting arrangements in the 2000 Legislative Council elections.
Looking at the information, the then Financial Secretary Donald Tsang once pointed out that compulsory voting can make the politically colder middle class also have to vote. These people have a higher level of knowledge and are generally more inclined to support government policies.
The Executive Council discussed the issue of mandatory voting in November 1998, but the final supporters were vetoed.
The main concern is that Hong Kong people admire freedom. This arrangement may arouse public disgust. Liu Zhaojia, deputy director of the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Chinese University at the time, also pointed out that a considerable part of the citizens who do not vote may be dissatisfied with the election system and the government. Dissatisfaction with governance or disinterest in politics is also an expression of attitude.
If penalties are introduced, there may be a large number of voters who do not vote in protest, or there may be a large number of invalid votes.
In addition, to implement mandatory voting, it is generally necessary to implement it together with an automatic voter registration system. However, Hong Kong does not have a household registration system and the address registration of the voters concerned is not complete. In reality, it is difficult to track accurately.
If the system is to be restructured, it will involve the entire voter registration system and even the population registration policy.
If so, the issue of mandatory voting has not been the focus of discussion in Hong Kong for a long time.
Looking at the information of the Legislative Council, there have been only sporadic discussions on mandatory voting issues in recent years. For example, in the Bills Committee of the 2014 Election Laws (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill in May 2014, there were individual members including Chung Kwok-bin and representatives of some organizations invited to attend. It is recommended that the government consider relevant systems.
However, Liu Jianghua, then deputy director of the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau, responded that if mandatory voting is implemented, attention must be paid to the conditions of the people in Hong Kong. It must be based on extensive public discussion and consensus, which is exactly the same as the government's concerns more than 20 years ago.
Behind the turnout rate involves a political game between the government and the democrats
In recent years, political issues have dominated the discussion of the electoral system, and the tipping point originated from the 2019 district council elections.
At that time, affected by the social atmosphere, the turnout rate reached 71.23% and a total of 2.94 million people voted, both of which were the highest in the history of Hong Kong elections.
In this election, the democrats won a big victory, sweeping 85% of the seats.
However, precisely because of the victory of the democrats, the newly elected district councillors have extremely tense relations with the government, and some people have been accused of "spreading separatism," and the government has "overheaded" the district councils by administrative means.
Because of this, the central government decided to implement the policy of "patriots ruling Hong Kong" with an iron fist. The newly revised election system of the National People's Congress directly overturned the democratic process that has been returned to the present day.
Under the new system, even if government officials insist that this is not a "democratic retrogression" but a "perfect system," the weakening of the democratic component of the overall political system is an indisputable fact in any case.
Because of this, the democrats began to voice boycotts of elections and refusal to vote, and they all came from their own.
In the aforementioned context, the next Legislative Council election will more or less be regarded as a "disguised referendum" by the public on the new system. It is also a game between the government and the democrats.
As the former Democratic Party chairman Emily Liu pointed out, the reason why the government deliberately "studied" the regulation of vain votes was because it worried that the next large election would be too low or there would be a large number of vain votes. Compared with the 2019 district council elections, It may make people feel that the new system is insufficiently recognized, and it is not "widely supported by all walks of life in Hong Kong" as the official said.
True acceptability stems from fair elections
In short, behind mandatory and voluntary voting is the balance between "civic duty" and "free will."
In an authoritarian or dictatorial society, the ruling authority will use forced voting to achieve the desired result and “justify” its own source of power; but in a democratic country, moderate implementation of mandatory voting can also promote citizen participation in society .
Therefore, compulsory voting itself is not "a scourge," and everything depends on the social reality at the time.
To apply the situation in Hong Kong today, when the political atmosphere is high-pressure and the pro-democracy supporters are full of powerlessness, the willingness to vote will decline. It is precisely that "no voting is a kind of attitude."
After Beijing revised the Hong Kong election system, if the democrats believed that they had "nothing to play" and called on voters not to vote, the problem would not necessarily come from the voters, but whether the system itself was persuasive enough to convince the public that it was fair and just.
For the convenience of explanation, here are the remarks of two pro-Beijing people: Shao Shanbo, the former chief adviser of the Central Policy Group, known as the "Left King", said that the current opposition forces are "withdrawing, leaving, leaving, and imprisoning." There is no longer a huge resistance force. The government can smoothly promote policies to modify Hong Kong’s electoral system. "Don’t overkill, make (Hong Kong) patients dead." Professor Rao Geping of Peking University Law School also pointed out that the future system should preserve legal politics for the opposition. Development space, avoid over-correction, too much is too late.
Perhaps, whether the new system will be "overkilled," overcorrected, and overkill is the key to whether it has sufficient acceptance.
▼Change of Election Committee Sector▼
Election restructuring｜Non-voting vs. No-voting Moderate pan-democrats: White votes are more active to show the will of Hong Kong people
Electoral restructuring︱Government research and regulation of white votes Xie Weijun: Advocating boycotts or committing sedition, National Security
Dismantling the bureau︱The government researches and regulates the "white vote". The cross-campaign legal circles all point out that there is no need: it is a civil right
Election reforms: Zheng Ruohua: The public should not vote in vain and will study whether regulation is adequate
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