Calling for blank votes could be a crime: Paul Tse

Pro-Beijing lawmaker, Paul Tse, said on Monday that people might be committing a crime, if they called on others to cast blank votes in protest at Beijing’s overhaul of Hong Kong’s electoral system.

This came after the Secretary for Justice, Teresa Cheng, said on Sunday that officials would study whether there needed to be more regulation to prevent such behaviour.

Speaking on an RTHK programme, Tse agreed with the minister that it was a person’s civic responsibility to cast a ballot but that there was no law against casting blank votes.

However Tse said, if someone were to call for such action in an organised manner, that might amount to subversion under the national security law, or other criminal offences.

The subject also came up for discussion on Commercial Radio. In an interview, University of Hong Kong legal academic Johannes Chan, said people would be put off by more government regulation and this could lead to more protest voting.

Chan said he thought the government was weighing its options with regards to blank votes, as it was concerned that the turnout rate would dip to new lows after the election overhaul, with supporters of the pro-decmoracy camp possibly showing no interest in voting.

He called on the government to think about why people would cast blank votes instead of worrying about the possibility.

The chairman of the Democratic Party, Lo Kin-hei, added that casting blank votes has always been a way for people to express dissatisfaction and to show that they liked none of the candidates. He questioned whether Hongkongers’ only choice was to support the government.