Hong Kong lawmaker proposes digital ID checks for housing estate votes to combat bid-rigging

A Hong Kong lawmaker has suggested using a government-managed digital platform to verify property owners’ identities when casting their ballots in estate meetings, a measure meant to help prevent unauthorised proxy voting.

Lawmaker Christine Fong made the proposal at a Legislative Council (LegCo) meeting on Wednesday on combatting bid-rigging, an anti-competitive practice in the building maintenance industry that the city’s leader John Lee has moved to criminalise, almost a year after a deadly apartment complex fire in Tai Po.

Her suggestion took the form of a member’s motion, a proposal introduced by a lawmaker that is not intended to have legislative effect but may urge the government to adopt specific measures.

According to a LegCo document, Fong suggested looking into the use of the government’s “iAM Smart” digital platform to establish an electronic mechanism for verifying and confirming the identities of property owners, “thereby preventing issues such as forgery and unauthorized signing of powers of attorney and the abuse of proxy votes.”

Unauthorised votes

Unauthorised proxy votes cast at a December 2021 meeting helped appoint the project consultant for renovation works at Wang Fuk Court, which were ongoing at the time of the fire that killed 168 people and displaced thousands in November last year.

Project consultant Will Power Architects has since been prosecuted by authorities and named as one of the “main culprits” behind the blaze, along with works contractor Prestige Construction & Engineering.

About a quarter of the proxy votes were collected by then-District Councillor Peggy Wong, who resigned from office in September amid allegations over her role at the estate and after months of absences at council meetings.

However, evidence presented to an independent probe committee was insufficient to prove she was involved in bid-rigging at the Tai Po housing estate, according to the inquiry’s final report.

Speaking at the legislature on Wednesday, lawmaker Fong, formerly a district councillor, said that she knew of votes being cast at estates in her district in the name of homeowners who were overseas at the time, without their knowledge.

In her submission, she also urged the government to establish a blacklist system under which parties convicted of bid-rigging would be prohibited from submitting tenders involving public funds and subsidies, as well as projects for buildings subject to mandatory inspections.

She also suggested looking into setting up an anonymised electronic tendering system and using artificial intelligence and big data to establish an “anomaly alert” system for tenders.

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James Lee is a reporter at Hong Kong Free Press with an interest in culture and social issues. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English and a minor in Journalism from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he witnessed the institution’s transformation over the course of the 2019 extradition bill protests and after the passing of the Beijing-imposed security law.

Since joining HKFP in 2023, he has covered local politics, the city’s housing crisis, as well as landmark court cases including the 47 democrats national security trial. He was previously a reporter at The Standard where he interviewed pro-establishment heavyweights and extensively covered the Covid-19 pandemic and Hong Kong’s political overhauls under the national security law.