Voter listed Four Seasons hotel as a home

Almost 100 voters in Central registered offices and hotels, including the luxury Four Seasons, as their homes.

Other complaints aired yesterday included one by a candidate who lost by 24 votes and later found that more than 100 voters registered their addresses in six buildings that were being demolished,

The cases take the number of suspected incidents of vote-rigging in the district council elections to 800.

As the row in the wake of the November 6 polls intensified, Chief Secretary Stephen Lam Sui-lung vowed to tighten voter registration and electoral arrangements if needed and said all suspected vote-rigging cases would be followed up.

A rough count by the South China Morning Post found at least 800 possible false or inaccurate registration claims in the election, based on information provided by political parties or reported by media.

Hui Chi-fung, a Democrat who won the Chung Wan seat in Central and Western District, said he had found nearly 100 voters who had registered their main residential addresses at offices and hotel rooms in Central and Admiralty.

'I believe there might be vote-rigging in those cases. I will lodge complaints to the Registration and Electoral Office and the police after compiling more information,' Hui said.

Hui was among seven Democrats who protested at the electoral office and at police headquarters in Wan Chai yesterday morning.

His complaint included a rival, Wai Pui-shuen, who ran as an independent. Hui said Wai had moved into a 250-sq-ft home in Tung Tze Terrace on Aberdeen Street with five other family members a year ago and planned to move out soon after losing to him by a margin of 151 votes.

Another complainant was Winfield Chong Wing-fai, a Democrat who lost by 24 votes to Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong vice-chairman Horace Cheung Kwok-kwan in Sai Wan constituency, Central and Western District.

Chong said 118 voters had registered their addresses at six buildings in his constituency that were in the process of being, or had already been, pulled down.

'The suspected number of voters involved was about five times the difference I lost to my opponent. This is a matter of concern,' Chong said.

Major pan-democratic parties are asking their candidates to gather problematic voter registrations.

Lam Kin-man - a candidate for the Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood, who was defeated by two votes in King's Park constituency, Yau Tsim Mong District - took the case to the Independent Commission Against Corruption. He claimed to have collected 57 questionable registrations in seven flats and would also report it to the police.

'We checked with the land registry and found none of the voters concerned own or have ever owned the flats they registered at,' said Lam.

Allegations of vote-rigging emerged earlier this month and prompted an investigation. Some 388 complaints have been filed with the ICAC over the election, 12 related to alleged vote-rigging. Police have received at least 16 reports.