Residents head to a polling station for the 2023 District Council Ordinary Election in Yau Ma Tei, Hong Kong, on Dec 10, 2023. (PARKER ZHENG / CHINA DAILY)
The electronic poll register system failure in December’s District Council election was caused by design alterations that lacked sufficient load testing, and no signs of external attack were discovered, the incident’s mid-term investigation report showed.
The Electoral Affairs Commission submitted its report to Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu on Friday and later briefed media outlets on the report’s findings at a news conference.
The failure happened on the night of Dec 10, polling day of the District Council Ordinary Election, at 7:37 pm, preventing polling stations from allowing ballot papers to be accessed via the electronic system.
The commission decided to issue ballot papers manually until the close of polling, which was delayed by 90 minutes. Subsequently, Lee requested the commission to set up a dedicated investigation group and submit a mid-term report within six weeks of the incident.
The investigation did not find any records of external attacks, said Bernard Man, chairman of the investigation group, adding that the system has a “closed” design, which means that it cannot be connected from any external devices
On Friday, Bernard Man, chairman of the investigation group, said that they found design problems with the two programs of the poll register system, causing computation time to increase as the election went on. At the time of the incident, utilization of the central processing unit of the system’s server had reached almost 100 percent, leading to an overload at 7.37 pm – 11 hours after the election began.
Owing to another design issue, some programs in the system unnecessarily occupied a large amount of resources in the server and made it difficult for other programs to run, eventually causing the system to fail.
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Man concluded that the main cause of the failure was that the technical team of the Registration and Electoral Office had not conducted sufficient load testing when they altered the system design. The technical team also did not adequately explain details of the alterations and any possible ramifications to those in charge of the system’s security.
The investigation did not find any records of external attacks, Man said, adding that the system has a “closed” design, which means that it cannot be connected from any external devices.
The Police Force also investigated the operation of polling stations on polling day and the system’s design issues, discovering no evidence to suggest any malicious attempt to sabotage or affect the operation of the system.
A man poses outside a polling station after casting his vote at Raimondi College, Hong Kong, on Dec 10, 2023. (EDMOND TANG / CHINA DAILY)
David Lok Kai-hong, chairman of the commission, said that there had been a miscalculation in the total number of voters and the total voter turnout rate announced after the election. The actual number of voters has now been updated to 1,195,331, which is an increase of 2,138. The revised turnout rate is 27.59 percent, or an increase of 0.05 percent.
Lok said the miscalculation was caused by manual counting after the electronic system had failed. Also, some dedicated polling stations, such as those set up in panel institutions and police stations, were omitted from the calculation.
Lok said that those ballots were counted eventually after the close of the polling. Therefore, the election’s final results have not been affected, and there is no other error after repeated reviews of the results, he said.
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The investigation group will follow up on the investigation’s findings and analyses, and the commission will submit a comprehensive report to the chief executive within three months of the election, Lok said.
