Professor Paul Eidelberg
Hong Kong, or rather the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), has a total area of 422 square miles on which reside some 6.85 million people, including less than 20,000 British. (Incidentally, Hong Kong has a per capita income of almost $30,000, among the highest in the world.)
Hong Kong has a 60-member legislature. The legislature represents 5 Geographical Constituencies and 28 Functional Constituencies. The 5 Geographical Constituencies are represented by 24 members. The 28 Functional Constituencies (e.g., Education, Finance, Medicine, Labor, etc.) are represented by 30 members. (Labor has three representatives) The remaining 6 members of the legislature are the Election Committee.
Over 3 million registered voters had the right to vote in the Geographical Constituencies. The list voting system is used in the election. A voter can only choose one of the lists printed on the ballot paper.
Preferential voting is employed in four Functional Constituencies. A voter must choose at least one candidate. He/she must mark ‘1’ in the circle opposite the name of the candidate of his/her first preference, ‘2’ opposite the name of the candidate of his/her second preference, and so on. For the remaining 24 Functional Constituencies, the first-past-the-post system is used to determine the election results.
Notice the combination of diverse kinds of representation election—geographical and functional—coupled to diverse methods of election, namely, party lists, preferential voting, and “first-past-the-post.”
Regrettably, Israel’s parliamentary electoral system suffers by comparison. Indeed, of the 77 parliamentary electoral systems I have examined, Israel’s is by far the worst, indeed, is the least democratic!