Elections chief expects results to come within hours

The chairman of the Electoral Affairs Commission, Barnabas Fung, says officials will strive to speed up the vote counting after the Legislative Council poll on Sunday and are hopeful that the results of all 90 seats up for grabs could be announced by noon on Monday.

He told a radio programme that he hoped the results for the 40 Legco seats returned by the Election Committee members could be made available within three or four hours of polling stations closing at 10.30pm, if not even earlier.

Fung said he hoped the vote counting for the 20 seats in ten geographical constituencies could be finished by Monday morning.

He said it would take longer to get the results for the functional constituencies as the ballot boxes would need to be transported from different polling stations to the central vote counting station in Wan Chai, but he hoped it could be done by noon on Monday.

The commission came under fire for a serious delay in the announcement of the results of the poll for the Election Committee in September.

Fung said officials had streamlined procedures and boosted manpower in an effort to count the votes as quickly as possible.