The Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC) today released the proposed guidelines on election-related activities in respect of the Legislative Council Election for a public consultation that will last for 30 days until August 1.
The 2025 LegCo General Election will be held on December 7. Before each general election, the EAC will review and update the guidelines.
At a press conference today, EAC Chairman David Lok said that these guidelines aim to explain in simple language the provisions under current electoral legislation with a view to reminding candidates and other relevant people of the regulations and requirements of the electoral legislation; and to promulgate a code of conduct based on the fair and equal treatment principles in respect of election-related activities which are not covered by the legislation.
The amendments are mainly composed of four categories: to reflect the amended electoral legislation, such as the procedures if electronic counting arrangements are adopted in functional constituency elections; to reflect the latest electoral arrangements and facilitation measures, for instance, electors could log on to an online system to check information such as their allocated polling stations, and candidates could submit election forms via electronic means; to further elaborate the contents of the guidelines to enable candidates and other relevant people to have a clearer understanding of the areas which they should pay attention to; and to align with the amendments already made to the other guidelines on election-related activities.
Mr Lok said: “To enable the public to better understand the requirements of the relevant electoral legislation and the code of conduct formulated by the EAC for the conduct of election-related activities, we have also enhanced the proposed guidelines by, for example, explaining the relevant electoral arrangements in the form of tables, consolidating the contents of the chapters, etc, with a view to making the proposed guidelines more concise and easy to comprehend.”
The proposed guidelines can be downloaded online or viewed at the Registration & Electoral Office, the Home Affairs Enquiry Centres of all district offices and the major and district public libraries.
People are welcome to make written representations on the proposed guidelines by email, by post to 8/F, Treasury Building, 3 Tonkin Street West, Cheung Sha Wan, Kowloon, or fax to 2511 1682 on or before August 1.
The EAC will hold a public forum from 7pm to 9pm on July 18 at the School Hall, 4/F, Kowloon Tong Government Primary School. The last admission time is 8pm.
Call 2891 1001 for enquiries.
