Govt urged to seriously review poll system failure
Liberal Party chairman Peter Shiu on Monday called on the government to seriously review the electronic poll register system, saying the system failure was regrettable and had disappointed many eligible voters.  The authorities earlier apologised for the system glitch, with Chief Executive John Lee requesting election officials to set up a task force to investigate what happened.  Speaking on a radio programme, the lawmaker said the system glitch was not ideal. "I hope the government will seriously review the process. The voting hours were extended for one and a half hours, but due to the delay in the announcement and weather conditions, I believe some people who planned to vote decided against it in the end," he said. Shiu added that he believes the voting rate this time was lower than the last Legco election, because voters tend to pay more attention to what happens in the legislature.  Meanwhile, the chairman of the Business and Professionals Alliance, Lo Wai-kwok, said authorities should have decided earlier to switch to paper ballots after the glitch.   The system malfunction happened at around 7.42pm on Sunday night and polling stations switched to a manual system about half an hour later.  "In hindsight, it took time for the computer system to recover, and we had to resort to the manual system anyway. But is there some way we can speed up the switching over process? It shouldn't have taken so long for the decision to be made," Lo told a radio program.  The voter turnout for the directly-elected District Council seats was 27.54 percent.