http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_LegCo_elections,_2004
2004 Legislative Council Election Official Govenment Site
Hong Kong Voting System: Proportional Representation using Largest remainder method with Hare Quota
First Past the Post Electro System: Found in UK, Previous Colonies, also in China for executive offices (haha)
Voting Systems around the world
A record 3.2 million voters registered for the election. The turnout rate was 53%, with 1.78 million voters cast ballots for the election. This is a historical record in Hong Kong, beating the 1998 record by 200,000 votes.
While the pro-democratic opposition candidates have gained new seats in the legislature compared with the previous elections, this has fallen short of their expectations. For the geographical constituencies, candidates from the pro-democratic camp secured 60 percent of the votes in the elections, gaining 18 seats (up from 17) in this category. On the other hand, the pro-Beijing / pro-business candidates made greater gains, winning 12 directly elected seats (up from 7). Ironically, in the functional constituencies which the pro-democratic camp sought to abolish, the camp made more gains (from 5 to 7 seats).
Despite the increase in the number of seats returned by geographical constituencies and the record turnout, both of which was widely expected to be beneficial to the pro-democratic camp, the Democratic Party (民主黨) (secured 12 of 60 seats) lost the status of being the largest political party in the Legislative Council to the pro-government Democratic Alliance for Betterment of Hong Kong, and become only the third party. Some attributed the lower-than-expected performance of the pro-democratic camp to mis-calculation and chaotic coordination in vote allocation and personal scandals involving some of its candidates.
Overall speaking, the pro-Beijing and pro-business parties succeeded to retain majority in the legislature. However, pro-democracy candidates gained the one-third threshold necessary to block changes to the Basic Law of Hong Kong. This session of the legislature also saw the entrance of relatively radical members of the democratic camp. As a result debates in the legislature are expected to be more heated.
There are some reports of irregularities in some polling stations which ran out of ballot boxes, causing long delays. Some stations reportably use cardboard boxes without official seals. Some candidates and their supporters are preparing for petition against the election results.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 