How Hong Kong residents living in mainland China could have the right to vote in city elections

Hong Kong residents cannot vote outside Hong Kong in the same way that Australian or American nationals can, mainly because, under our laws, eligible voters must be permanent residents who are “ordinarily resident” in Hong Kong.

This means that even permanent residents who have the right of abode in Hong Kong might not qualify as voters if they have left Hong Kong and can no longer claim that the city is their ordinary place of residence.

As many distinguished lawyers have explained, “ordinary residence” is not a term of art in English law. There is no clear-cut statutory definition, but plenty of jurisprudence on this subject, going back to the leading judgments of Lord Denning and Lord Scarman in landmark cases.

Even so, as David Lock, QC, explained in a talk on this subject in 2015, in most cases it should be relatively straightforward to determine whether a person is ordinarily resident in a specific place.

Many Hong Kong permanent residents working in mainland China shuttle between Hong Kong and the mainland and maintain a home in Hong Kong. As such, they are more likely to qualify as voters than Hong Kong permanent residents who have emigrated and seldom come back to the city.