A voter need not update address
Court hears no law broken when registered addresses of 16 people who cast ballots in Sai Wan constituency had been torn down
Voters who move home are not required to register at their new address to cast ballots, meaning the place they are registered at could have been demolished, the High Court heard yesterday.
A district councillor who won his constituency also said commercial shops could be valid residential addresses, as some people lived in upper areas, with the mezzanine units as the place of business.
The situation is legal provided the voters genuinely lived at the addresses at the time they registered, the court was told during the hearing of an election petition by a defeated district council candidate.
Winfield Chong Wing-fai of the Democratic Party is challenging the result of the poll in the Sai Wan constituency of Central and Western District, which he lost two years ago by 24 votes to Cheung Kwok-kwan of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong.
He filed the petition after he found that the registered addresses of 173 voters did not appear to be residential units.
The court heard that only 41 of the 173 actually voted. Of these, 16 were registered as living in a building now torn down and most of the others in ground-floor shops.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption investigated after Chong complained but it concluded there was no case to pursue, the court was told.