I don't understand using these graphics. Are kids allowed to vote? (GovHK: ECSS website)

As many as 1,500 individuals, representing 0.0364% of Hong Kong's total registered voters, will become members of the all-powerful Election Committee starting February 1, 2027 for a 5-year term. They will decide the next Chief Executive in 2027, and 40 out of the 90 Legislative Council members (representing the Election Committee Constituency) in 2030.

After reading the SCMP's gawd-awful "explainer", I'm writing a proper one which gives you an idea of the selection process, who gets to vote, and the voting system, and perhaps you'll understand why Freedom House gave Hong Kong a score of 2.25/10 in terms of political rights. This blog post is for you, election geeks!

First, a look at the composition of the Election Committee.

Election Committee Sectors and Subsectors

The 1,500 members of the Election Committee are divided into five broad sectors, each with 300 members:

1. Industrial, commercial and financial sector

2. The professions (other than those in Sector 1). It’s a cool name.

3. Grassroots, labour, religious, and other sectors

4. Members of Legislative Council, representatives of district organizations, and other organizations

5. HKSAR deputies to the NPC, HKSAR members of the National Committee of the CPPCC and representatives of Hong Kong members of relevant national organisations

Each of those 5 sectors is further divided into subsectors, for a total of 40 subsectors. They are:

1. Catering, Commercial (first), Commercial (second), Commercial (third), Employers' Federation of Hong Kong, Finance, Financial services, Hotel, Import & export, Industrial (first), Industrial (second), Insurance, Real estate and construction, Small and medium enterprises, Textiles and garment, Tourism, Transport, Wholesale and retail. (15-17 seats each)

2. Accountancy, Architectural & surveying & planning & landscape, Chinese medicine, Education, Engineering, Legal, Medical and health services, Social welfare, Sports & performing arts & culture & publication, Technology & innovation. (30 seats each)

3. Agriculture and fisheries, Associations of Chinese fellow townsmen, Grassroots associations, Labour groups, Religious groups. (60 seats each)

4. Legislative Council members (90 seats), Heung Yee Kuk (27 seats), Representatives of associations of Hong Kong residents in the mainland (27 seats), Representatives of members of area committees & District Fight Crime Committees & District Fire Safety Committees of Hong Kong and Kowloon (76 seats), Representatives of members of area committees & District Fight Crime Committees & District Fire Safety Committees of the New Territories (80 seats).

5. HKSAR deputies to the NPC and HKSAR members of the National Committee of the CPPCC (190 seats), Representatives of Hong Kong members of relevant national organisations (110 seats). We'll look at those "relevant national organisations" later.

Wikipedia has detailed information on each subsector.

In 2021, China's National People's Congress expanded the size of the Election Committee from 1,200 to 1,500, created a Fifth Sector for NPC deputies, CPPCC members and members of relevant national organisations, added new district-committee representation, and removed 117 seats previously held by District Councils, ensuring "patriots administering Hong Kong."

The Selection Process

While there are elections on November 22, not all 1,500 members are elected. In fact, there are three ways one can become an Election Committee member:

1. Automatic selection, called ex-officio membership. Individuals who already hold certain offices are automatically Election Committee members, such as Legislative Council members, the 190 Hong Kong NPC deputies and CPPCC members, and various university, professional, and institutional office-holders. There are potentially 362 ex-officio members; however, there will be at least one vacancy, as William Wong resigned from LegCo, and a by-election is not planned.

2. Nominations, which really means "selections". A total of seven subsectors have seats filled by nomination -- or, really, selection. Some subsectors only select seats by nomination, while others use a mix of both nomination and election. For each of those subsectors that select seats by nomination, designated bodies or organisations representing their subsector simply decide who gets seats. In most cases, a single organisation chooses, for example, the Association of Hong Kong Accounting Advisors Ltd. nominates all 15 members from the Accountancy subsector. But others may be determined by multiple bodies; for example, all 60 seats in the Religion subsector are chosen by nomination, but are evenly split six ways among the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong, Chinese Muslim Cultural and Fraternal Association, Hong Kong Christian Council, Hong Kong Taoist Association, Confucian Academy, and Hong Kong Buddhist Association. A total of 156 of the 1,500 members of the Election Committee are selected by nomination.

3. Election, on November 22. Formally, it's called the "Election Committee Subsector Elections" (ECSS). The remaining 982 members of the Election Committee are chosen by election.

Candidate Eligibility

Can you run for one of the 982 available seats? The basic requirements are

1. Be at least 18 years old,

2. Be a registered elector in a geographical constituency in Hong Kong,

3. Either be registered and eligible as a voter in the particular subsector in which you will be a candidate, OR have a "substantial connection" with that subsector.

If you meet the basic requirements, then you must find at least five registered voters in that subsector who will nominate you as a candidate for election. Each registered voter can not nominate more than the number of seats available in that subsector.

After nomination, vetting for all election candidates is conducted by the Candidate Eligibility Review Committee (CERC), which is headed by Chief Secretary for Administration Eric Chan, and whose official members include Secretary for Security Chris Tang, Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs Alice Mak, and Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Janice Tse. Furthermore, the Committee for Safeguarding National Security of the HKSAR, with the assistance of the National Security Department of the Hong Kong Police Force, assesses whether allegiance/upholding requirements are met, ensuring “patriots administering Hong Kong.” Any assessment by the Committee for Safeguarding National Security cannot be challenged in court.

The 156 nominations ("selections") by subsectors for Election Committee seats must also go through the vetting process.

Below, a summary of every subsector and how members of each subsector are chosen. You'll notice that some of the subsectors are in blue and some ex-officio numbers are in green; we'll get to that in a moment.

Who Gets to Vote

More specifically, what gets to vote. <long pause> Huh?

You see, in some subsectors, the voters are not individual voters; rather, they are what are called corporate voters. This means that only corporate entities are allowed to vote, and each corporate entity assigns an authorised representative to cast its ballot.

So which subsectors' elected seats are chosen by corporate voters instead of individual voters? If you look at the chart above, only subsectors listed in blue are selected by individual voters. Every other subsector either contains ex-officio members, has seats filled by nomination, and/or has seats elected by corporate voters.

Therefore, if you are a registered member of one of those four blue subsectors, you are eligible to vote for Election Committee members in that subsector. And how many of those registered members do you suppose are eligible to vote later next month? According to the government's press release, a total of 3,448 individual voters will decide 293 seats in this year's election. That's right, of the 4,116,965 registered electors in Hong Kong, fewer than 0.084% of the electorate has an individual vote in next month's election.

There are 5,894 corporate voters registered for this election; meaning, a maximum of 9,342 votes could be cast. Even with a 100% turnout, there might be races in which candidates earn Election Committee seats uncontested. Candidates have until October 20 to formally declare their intentions to run in the ECSS, so it won't be until later this month when we find out how many candidates will run uncontested. In 2021, 603 candidates from 23 subsectors ran uncontested, resulting in just 364 seats out of the 1,500 actually being contested by election.

Now who exactly are the corporate voters and what entities do they represent?

The names of the 5,894 corporate entities who are eligible to vote are publicly available, but not online. But to view them you must make an appointment with the Registration and Electoral Office for a 90-minute inspection session at its Cheung Sha Wan or Kwun Tong office.

"Relevant National Organisations"? What's that?

My impression was there are plenty of these relevant national organisations, but it turns out there are just five:

1. All-China Women’s Federation 中華全國婦女聯合會

2. All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce 中華全國工商業聯合會

3. All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese 中華全國歸國華僑聯合會

4. All-China Youth Federation 中華全國青年聯合會

5. China Overseas Friendship Association 中華海外聯誼會

In a nutshell, depending on the structure of the organisation, HKSAR delegates or committee members or council members are members of these organisations. There are 508 registered voters in this subsector, and they will elect 110 Election Committee members. Some notable members of those relevant national organisations include:

• Pansy Ho, billionaire daughter of Stanley (All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce)

• Vivian Kong Man-wai, Olympic fencing gold medalist and LegCo member (All-China Youth Federation)

• Adrian Cheng Chi-kong, K11 Malls (All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce)

• Bernard Chan, Our Hong Kong Foundation and former ExCo convenor (All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese)

• Nancy Ip Yuk-yu, HKUST president and neuroscientist (All-China Women's Federation)

• Peter Lee Ka-kit, co-chairman of Henderson Land (China Overseas Friendship Association)

Of note, all six of them are already ex-officio Election Committee members through different pathways. Ho, Cheng, and Lee are Hong Kong CPPCC national committee members, Kong is a LegCo member, Chan is an ex-officio member in the Social Welfare subsector. Ip has TWO ex-officio qualifications: one in the Education subsector as HKUST president AND as an NPC deputy, but she can only occupy one Election Committee seat, as you'll see later below.

Voting System

By now it seems highly unnecessary to describe the voting system, given the futility of how the average Hongkonger has virtually no say in the selection of the Election Committee, but here goes: Subsector elections use the block vote system: with N candidates and n seats available, where N > n; each voter may vote for up to n candidates, and the top n vote-getters are elected to the Election Committee.

In other words, say there are 20 people running for a subsector that will elect 15 of them. Each voter will get to select up to 15 candidates. The votes are tallied, and the 15 candidates with the most votes become Election Committee members.

If the number of candidates is equal to or less than the number of seats available in that subsector, then all candidates gain seats uncontested.

And finally, some weird scenarios

Here are some questions I thought of while writing this article, which is starting to get too long for my taste. If you think of a crazy scenario that I haven’t considered, feel free to write a comment on Bluesky @kjoules.org

What if an Election Committee member can qualify for an ex-officio seat through two separate subsectors?

The rules are fairly convoluted, so the quick answer is: it depends. If one of the ex-officio members happens to be a member of one of the subsectors with green ex-officio seats listed on the chart above, then that ex-officio member can actually personally designate a member of that subsector for a seat. Obviously, any designates selected need to be vetted and be deemed “patriots.”

Regardless, any ex-officio member cannot occupy more than one seat, and in most other cases, the second seat becomes vacant. Like I said, the rules are convoluted.

This leads to the next logical question.

Can any individual hold more than one Election Committee seat?

No. A person could have more than one path to obtaining a seat, but the rules, as convoluted as they may be, will limit them to just one seat, leaving the other seat(s) to be dealt with either through substitution, vacancy, or a different candidate/member. There is a process of which subsector must be chosen; certain subsectors take priority over others when multiple pathways are available.

Why are there three Commercial subsectors? Why not just combine them into one?

The three subsectors represent three separate business chambers: Commercial (First) is composed of members of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce (HKGCC), Commercial (Second) represents the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce (CGCC), and Commercial (Third) is for the Hong Kong Chinese Enterprises Association (HKCEA).

What if in a subsector election there is a tie for the last available seat?

Those that are tied for the last available seat draw lots. 10 ping pong balls labelled 1 to 10 are placed in a bag. Each candidate draws a ball, shows the ball to the returning officer, then returns the ball to the bag. After all candidates have drawn, the candidate with the largest number wins the seat. If two or more candidates draw the same highest number, those candidates draw again, while those who drew lower numbers are eliminated. A similar process occurs if there are three or more candidates tied for the last two or more spots.

I have no idea what in the bleep you are talking about.

I wouldn't be surprised. The whole point is to know that if you are a Hongkonger reading this blog, you're most likely among the more than 99.77% of the registered electorate who will not be participating in the 2026 Election Committee Subsector Elections.