Less than a third of registered voters turnout to cast their ballots in Hong Kong's first legislative elections, the lowest since the semi-autonomous territory's return to China in 1997.
About a third of voters in Hong Kong cast their ballots in the first election since Beijing amended the laws to reduce the number of directly elected lawmakers and vet candidates to ensure that only those loyal to China can run.
The semi-autonomous territory was rocked by pro-democracy protests in 2014 and 2019 that were crushed by the security forces, followed by the imposition of a sweeping national security law that silenced most of the city's opposition activists and led others to flee abroad. Barnabus Fung, the head of Hong Kong's Electoral Affairs Commission, announced that turnout for the Legislative Council vote was "about 30.2 per cent".The turnout for this year's elections was vastly lower than polls in 2012 and 2016, when over 50 per cent of registered voters cast their ballots.
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