The 2019 Hong Kong District Council elections were held on 24 November 2019 for all 18 District Councils of Hong Kong. 452 seats from all directly elected constituencies, out of the 479 seats in total, were contested. Nearly three million people voted, equivalent to 71 per cent of registered voters, an unprecedented turnout in the electoral history of Hong Kong. The election was widely viewed as a de facto referendum on the concurrent anti-extradition protests.
All pro-Beijing parties suffered major setbacks and losses, including the flagship pro-Beijing party Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), which received its largest defeat in history, losing 96 seats. Executive Councillor Regina Ip's New People's Party failed to obtain a single seat, and was ousted from all District Councils as a result. Dozens of prominent pro-Beijing heavyweights lost their campaigns for re-election, including Junius Ho, a controversial anti-protest figure who had expressed support for the triads behind the mob attack in Yuen Long on 21 July.
In contrast, the pro-democracy camp in conjunction with the localist camp achieved its biggest landslide victory in the history of Hong Kong, gaining absolute majority in votes and electoral seats in all of the 18 District Councils and tripling their seats from around 124 to about 388. The pro-Beijing parties could retain their control in only one District Council, due to their advantage in ex officio seats in the Islands District Council. Many pro-democracy candidates who actively participated in the protests were elected, including convenor of the Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF) Jimmy Sham.
This election is described by some as potentially the last free election in Hong Kong, as the national security law and election overhaul imposed by Beijing would vet democrats for the next election. More than 70 per cent of elected District Councillors resigned or were disqualified over the following two years due to various reasons.
Boundary changes In July 2017, following a review of the numbers of elected seats for each District Council having regard to local population forecasts, the Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC) proposed to create 21 new elected seats across 10 District Councils: One new seat for each of Kowloon City, Yau Tsim Mong and Tsuen Wan District Councils; Two new seats for each of Sham Shui Po, Kwai Tsing, Tuen Mun and Sai Kung District Councils; Three new seats for each of Kwun Tong and Sha Tin District Councils; and Four new seats for the Yuen Long District Council.
Accordingly, the total number of elected seats for the 2019 elections increased by 21 from 431 to 452.
Gerrymandering concerns Some pro-democracy District Councillors accused the EAC of gerrymandering, stating that the borders of their constituencies were altered "unreasonably" to adversely affect their parties' election prospects. EAC chairman Barnabas Fung responded that the changes were based purely on an objective calculation. "Factors with political implications would definitely not be taken into consideration," Fung said.
Background Project Storm In April 2017, Occupy Central co-founder Benny Tai proposed the "Project Storm" strategy to win the majority of the District Council seats for the pro-democrats in the coming election. He stated that by winning a majority of the some 400 District Council seats, the pro-democracy camp could gain an additional 117 seats of the District Council subsectors on the 1,200-member Election Committee which elects the Chief Executive. Tai believed that by making it harder for Beijing to manipulate the Chief Executive election, it would compel Beijing to restart the stalled political reform after its restrictive proposal was voted down in 2015 in the aftermath of the Occupy protests.
Power for Democracy, a group that coordinated different parties and groups in the pro-democracy camp, worked with pro-democrats to identify suitable candidates for all 452 constituencies. The group also held rounds of non-binding primaries to select a candidate if more than one pro-democrat was interested in running in the same constituency. However, the camp still risked doubling up in about 30 constituencies.
Anti-extradition bill protests
In mid 2019, the Carrie Lam administration pushed forward the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation (Amendment) Bill 2019 to establish a mechanism that would allow the extradition of fugitives to any territory not covered by existing extradition treaties, including Taiwan, Mainland China and Macau. The proposal's purported purpose was to fill a legal loophole that allowed a Hong Kong suspect involved in a homicide case not to be extradited to Taiwan in 2018. The proposed bill raised grave concerns from various sectors of society, including lawyers, journalists, businesses, as well as foreign governments, who feared the heightened risk that Hong Kong citizens, dissidents, and foreign nationals passing through the city could be sent for trial without safeguards of the local courts to mainland Chinese courts under direct political control of the Communist Party.
Starting from June, rounds of demonstrations were attended by hundreds of thousands of people. The government first suspended the bill, and later proposed the withdrawal of the bill in September, which officially took place in October. The pro-Beijing parties, who were among the strongest advocates of the bill, worried that their support of the controversial bill as well as the abrupt U-turn would cost them votes in the upcoming District Council elections and the next year's Legislative Council election, risking a repeat of their devastating defeat in the 2003 District Council elections following the highly controversial national security legislation, which sparked massive protests across the city in 2003. There were also reports that the government was looking into the possibility of cancelling polls in areas where serious protests took place, or even postponing the elections altogether by invoking the Emergency Regulations Ordinance. The election was widely seen as a referendum on Lam's government and in particular an indication of the measure of support for the protesters.
Registration drive Registration drives are uncommon in Hong Kong, but promotion from campaigners led tens of thousands of new voters to register during mass protests against the controversial extradition bill, pouncing on an opportunity to bolster the democratic opposition's prospects in the upcoming elections. Over 386,000 newly registered electors were counted, an election cycle record turnout since the handover of Hong Kong. The number of registered voters between the ages of 18 and 35 jumped by more than 12 per cent compared to 2018.
While the number of registered voters had been increasing steadily, large social movements and demonstrations have a tendency to galvanise registration. In 2004, 303,885 people had registered after half a million people took to the streets to protest against a government-proposed national security law criminalising "sedition", which was based on Article 23 of the Basic Law. In 2015, 262,633 people registered as voters after the 2014 Occupy protests.
According to the Registration and Electoral Office (REO) under the EAC, the number of registered voters in the final registers for 2019 was 4,132,977, a record high since the handover of Hong Kong.
Nominations and disqualifications An unprecedented 1,104 nomination forms were received by returning officers during the two-week nomination period from 4 to 17 October, although six nominees withdrew their candidatures before the end of the nomination period. It is the first time in Hong Kong's history that all 452 District Council seats were contested, compared to the previous elections in 2015 where 68 seats were left uncontested.
At least four candidates, including Tommy Cheung Sau-yin, Mo Kai-hong, Liu Qing of the Democratic Party, and Billy Chan Shiu-yeung of the Community Sha Tin movement received letters from returning officers asking them to explain what they meant when they said "Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our times", a popular slogan that was frequently used in the anti-extradition protests. Two other hopefuls also received letters asking for their stance on Hong Kong independence, including Demosistō secretary-general Joshua Wong, who planned to run for the South Horizons West constituency. Wong was asked if he was running on behalf of his party Demosistō and if he supported the notion of "self-determination" for Hong Kong. Agnes Chow, a member of Demosistō, was barred from running in the March 2018 Legislative Council by-election on the grounds that Demosistō advocated "self-determination".
Henry Wong Pak-yu, who aimed for a seat in the Tin Heng constituency, was also questioned for his previous public pro-independence statements. Both Wongs denied they supported the Hong Kong independence movement. Political scientist Ma Ngok warned that any disqualification would only fuel the flames of the ongoing political crisis. In light of the risk of being disqualified, Joshua Wong and at least 12 other pro-democracy candidates, including former student leader Lester Shum and pro-democracy legislator Eddie Chu, arranged for a backup candidate to stand in the same constituency before the nomination period ended, as their candidacy had not yet been confirmed by the Returning Officers. Chu was previously disqualified from running in the January rural representative election by Returning Officer Enoch Yuen Ka-lok, citing his stance of supporting "self-determination".
More than ten days after the nomination period, acting Returning Officer Laura Liang Aron, who replaced Dorothy Ma Chau Pui-fun who took indefinite sick leave, barred Joshua Wong from running due to political reasons, making Wong the only pro-democrat to be disqualified due to his political stance in the election. Aron issued a six-page ruling noting that Wong dropped his advocacy of the option of independence as "a compromise, instead of a genuine intention" as Wong referred to Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping's remarks on separatism as a "stern threat" and reason for him and Demosistō to give up the advocacy of independence. Wong said the Returning Officer's decision showed that the central government was rigging the election, which was expected to be a key test of public sentiment about the protest movement. Kelvin Lam Ho-por, who stood in the same constituency, was widely believed to be Joshua Wong's substitute in case Wong was barred from running.
Pre-election events
November protests and university sieges
Over a hundred pro-democracy candidates launched an election rally at Victoria Park on 2 November, citing the Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Conduct) Ordinance which allowed for election meetings to be held in public, following the police rejection of the organisers' initial demonstration application.
Soon after the assembly started, the police quickly declared the rally an unauthorised assembly and dispersed attendees using means such as tear gas, pepper spray, and water cannons. Three pro-democrat candidates, Osman Cheng Chung-hang, Richard Chan Chun-chit and Man Nim-chi, were seen being taken away by the police. During the operation, officers pepper-sprayed Chan to subdue him, prompting calls from rally-goers for his release. The protests continued with clashes emerging between the police and protesters, where protesters responded to the police crackdown by throwing petrol bombs, vandalising MTR stations and shops seen as sympathetic to the Beijing government, spraying graffiti on walls and building barricades on streets, and capping the 21st week of anti-government demonstrations.