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| HONG KONG — On the surface, Hong Kong’s legislative election on Sunday is like any such poll the city has held, but its differences are stark. This time, candidates have been vetted by national security bodies. Several people have been arrested after calling for a boycott. Dozens of veteran pro-democracy figures, either in jail or in exile, are absent from the campaign trail. And partial turnout results suggested that voters were spurning the election in potentially record numbers. |
| The election— to choose 90 members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council — was the first since Beijing imposed a drastic overhaul of the political system to impose a “patriots only” policy in determining which candidates can run, tightening the governing Communist Party’s grip over the territory and leaving space only for the barest semblance of an opposition. Under the overhaul, only 20 seats were directly elected by residents; the rest were chosen by industry groups or Beijing loyalists. |
| While the rules of Hong Kong’s elections were always in favor of Beijing’s allies, the new system eliminates even the slightest uncertainty of previous campaigns, and the establishment’s near-total control of the legislature is now guaranteed. |
| Still, the government spared no effort to paint that the election is legitimate, even threatening foreign newspapers that suggest otherwise. Officials have exhorted voters to show up, apparently to little effect. |
| The opposition has been devastated by Beijing’s crackdown. |
| The last time Hong Kong held an election, the pro-democracy camp won a stunning victory, taking nearly 90 percent of the seats in the November 2019 vote for district councils. The vote, after months of antigovernment street protests, was a significant rebuke of Beijing’s authority. |
| The Communist Party has been determined not to see a repeat. |
| In January, the police arrested dozens of Hong Kong’s most well-known democracy advocates, saying their election platform amounted to a subversive plot against the government. Fourteen have been granted bail, but 33 remain in custody awaiting a trial that is not expected to begin until the second half of next year. Other opposition politicians have gone into exile, fearing arrest. |
| Those who have remained in the city’s pro-democracy parties were not participating in Sunday’s election. Some said they did not want to lend legitimacy to the process. The Democratic Party, the largest opposition group, said its members had no enthusiasm to run. |
| On Election Day, voter turnout was on track to hit a record low. |
| With the establishment’s control of the Legislative Council a foregone conclusion, the biggest question was whether voters would turn out, turning the election into something of an informal referendum on the new electoral system. |
| The answer seemed to be a rejection. By 9:30 p.m., an hour before polls closed, just 29 percent of eligible voters had turned out to vote for the few directly elected seats. If the trend were to hold, the turnout would be the lowest since Hong Kong, a former British colony, began holding legislative elections in 1991. |
| The previous low was 36 percent, in 1996, one year before Hong Kong returned to Chinese control. In 2016, the last time legislative elections were held, 58 percent of voters cast ballots. By an hour before polls closing that year, turnout had reached 53 percent. |
| “Low voter turnout is clearly an indicator of Hong Kong society that is deeply divided,” said Sonny Lo, a Hong Kong political analyst. “The political wounds from the 2019 protests were deep and the scars still remain.” |
| The government had aggressively encouraged voters to participate, setting up polling stations at the border with mainland China for Hong Kong residents who want to vote without going through quarantine. Top government officers have called on citizens to turn out. |
| But Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, has argued that a low number of voters could be a sign of satisfaction with the government. |
| “There is a saying that when the government is doing well and its credibility is high, the voter turnout will decrease because the people do not have a strong demand to choose different lawmakers to supervise the government,” she told Global Times, a newspaper controlled by the Communist Party of China. “Therefore, I think the turnout rate does not mean anything.” |
| Residents’ limited enthusiasm had been apparent throughout the day. Volunteers and candidates made last-minute pitches at street stands outside subway stations, handing out fliers as loudspeakers blared prerecorded slogans, but most passers-by ignored them. |
| At polling stations across the city, lines were few and far between. At one station on the western side of Hong Kong island on Sunday afternoon, three police officers stood watch as pedestrians streamed past, hardly any stopping to enter. |
| More than 10,000 police officers were deployed across the city, officials said, as well as 900 staff members of the Independent Commission Against Corruption, the government body overseeing the ban on calling for vote boycotts. |
| Ling Lui, 26, who showed up to vote with her father at a polling station in eastern Hong Kong Island, said the “patriots only” election would benefit Hong Kong. She was looking, she said, for a candidate who would “love Hong Kong, dare to speak out and be active.” |
| Paul Lai, 50, was less confident. He had to wait in line to vote in previous elections, he said after casting his ballot, but this year, there were just two or three people inside his polling station. He attributed the lower turnout in part to the candidates, many of whom he said were new and unfamiliar faces. |
| Asked how he chose who to vote for, he said, “Nothing, really. Just look at their platform, if they have one.” (Some of the candidates did not release platforms or had no social media presence.) He continued: “There’s nothing you can do. Just pick one at random.” |
| The few democracy backers on the ballot have toed Beijing’s line. |
| Only a few of all the candidates running this year have described themselves as “pro-democracy,” and they share one thing in common: They observe Beijing’s red lines. |
| They have avoided the sort of political stances that could lead to their disqualification or even imprisonment, such as calling for independence for Hong Kong or foreign sanctions against Hong Kong officials. |
| In Hong Kong’s new electoral landscape, the absence of the mainstream opposition has resulted in an odd political twist: Such outside candidates are being given some help by Beijing’s representatives and allies, who would in normal circumstances be their rivals. But the support is limited to helping them pass the rigorous nomination process to get on the ballot, not to winning votes on Election Day. |
| One pro-democracy candidate, Wong Sing-chi, said he believed it was important to fight for democracy by pursuing office, even if the system was flawed. If elected, he said, he would call for an amnesty for nonviolent protesters who have been sentenced to prison and a scaling back of the use of a national security law that has quashed dissent. |
| Mr. Wong, a former member of the Democratic Party, said he was asked twice this year by the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government, Beijing’s increasingly assertive arm in the city, about whether he would run. But he said he made the decision to run on his own. After he did so, he was given a powerful boost by Lo Man-tuen, a prominent pro-Beijing voice on the election committee, who helped him secure enough nominations from the body to run. |
| “I am absolutely not their cup of tea, but they also want me to run so there will be some other voices,” said Mr. Wong. |
| Adrian Lau, who won a seat on the district councils during a pro-democracy wave in 2019, said he was running for the legislative council because some voters did not have faith in pro-Beijing politicians. |
| “They need at least one or two Legco members who would really help them,” he said. |
| The mere mention of boycotts has been met with arrests and threats. |
| The police arrested at least 10 people in connection with violating election laws, accusing them of encouraging others to abstain from the election or to cast spoiled ballots. |
| Hong Kong courts issued warrants for at least seven activists and politicians who now live overseas, including the former lawmakers Ted Hui and Nathan Law. Mr. Law, who is in Britain, is accused of making a speech on Dec. 3 in which he urged voters to ignore the election. Mr. Hui, who is in Australia, urged voters to cast blank ballots. |
| The Hong Kong authorities also warned The Wall Street Journal that it may have broken the law with a November editorial that called the election a “sham vote.” The newspaper had said that “boycotts and blank ballots are one of the last ways for Hong Kongers to express their political views.” The government sent a similar warning letter to The Sunday Times of London over an article titled, “China shows its true colours — and they’re not pretty.” |
| The head of Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption warned that survey results from a prominent polling organization about potential turnout might also be illegal. |
| That organization, the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute, had been criticized by government supporters after a recent survey found that about 50 percent of respondents planned to vote in the election, the lowest-ever figure since the institute started asking the question in the early 1990s. |
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