Voting Rate In CE Election Passes 95 Percent

More than 95 percent of the nearly-1,500 Election Committee members cast ballots in the first two hours of the Chief Executive election.

The main voting station at the Wan Chai Convention and Exhibition Centre is open from 9am until 11:30am.

John Lee is the sole candidate in the election.

Election authorities said as of 11am, 1,406 Election Committee members had cast their votes, representing a turnout of 96.2 percent. The voting started at 9am and will close at 11.30am.

The head of the Electoral Affairs Commission, Barnabas Fung, said six Election Committee members have registered to cast their ballots from a special booth at the Penny's Bay quarantine facility.

"Their ballots will be thoroughly disinfected before being sent to the main vote-counting station here in Wan Chai," Fung said.

He added that the entire vote counting process is expected to take around one to one and a half hours.

One of the eligible voters, Allan Zeman from the Lan Kwai Fong Group, said he expects Lee to win the support of the majority of Election Committee members.

"I expect most people will vote for him... he's a good man and he's the only candidate of course. I really feel that he'll be very good for the next five years for Hong Kong," he told RTHK.

Non-establishment lawmaker Tik Chi-yuen, from Third Side, also said he's throwing his support behind the former chief secretary.

"In the future, cooperation is important. In the past, we had different voices and we could not come together and it will not benefit Hong Kong's development. So at this moment, we support Mr Lee. We want to demonstrate that [people with] different opinions, different voices, can join hands and work for the benefit of Hong Kong," he said.

Meanwhile, security has been tightened around the city, with the police conducting high-profile patrols as part of what they described as "counter terrorism measures to defend the SAR".

Roadblocks have also been set up at major trunk roads across Hong Kong.

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