The IT Constituency Needs a Fairer Eligibility Criteria

The calling for this site is rather obvious, and I tried to make it clear in the header banner. The election process in HK is very skewed in my mind. It is confusing and hard to participate. Most of the friends I have talked to in the IT industry have no idea that it is so complicated to become a registered voter in the IT functional constituency (ITFC). Even when people want to participate, the barriers are high. Why should the participation barriers be high? Is it that we do not want more people to participate?

Some other people think that the ITFC is already very "liberal", in that there are many personal votes vs. company votes. I disagree. In fact, I do not mind having corporate votes, in my mind, corporations are legal entities and if they have legal obligations why not have rights? I am not making a definitive argument for or against corporate votes here, but I think it deserves due exploration. What we have today is definitely not one which can reflect the will of the constituency. Or at least the structure is not one that is convincing.

The strangest thing is that for ITFC one has to join some arbitrary club or association to become eligible. Not only that, based on my limited knowledge, it seems that the criteria for being "eligible" is different for each organization you choose. Some requires multi-years of experience, some requires little more than a declaration, some requires tenure or exams... all in all, not every group is equal.

The system is simply not fair. The IT industry is one that is growing in size and in importance in HK as we move into the knowledge economy. A reflective electorial structure is important for the industry to voice its concerns and provide needed support to the administration governance in HK.