The government spent $1.2 billion promoting and running the 2023 District Council election under the new “Patriots ruling Hong Kong” concept.

The government should improve the nomination procedure for future District Council elections, according to one of a raft of measures proposed by the Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC) in its final report into the 2023 District Council election.

The 225 page report acknowledges criticism of the nomination system, including comments from the Court of First Instance which called the process “Kafkaesque” after a judicial review challenged new rules.

As such, the EAC suggested, the government should “consider whether there is room for enhancing the relevant arrangements to further facilitate prospective candidates to liaise with members of the District Committees to seek nominations.”

That nomination process, introduced for the 2023 District Council election under the “Patriots ruling Hong Kong” overhaul, was famously arduous, with even pro-establishment leader Michael Tien finding it difficult to find and contact nominators on behalf of his Round Table party candidates.

No pro-democracy candidates succeeded in gaining sufficient nominations to stand in the election.

Candidates needed nine nominations from their district’s “Three Committees” but with only nominators’ names published, many found contacting the nomination committee difficult.

This reporter, as a potential candidate for Kowloon City North, attempted to find and reach out to all 178 nominators in Kowloon City and, even with “referral support” from Home Affairs Department, received just four responses from the Three Committee nominators.

In addition, a large number of committee members were found to be standing in the election themselves and would not support other candidates. In Kowloon City, only 35% of nominators actually cast a nomination.

A judicial review claimed the process was undemocratic. But while judge Russell Coleman found for the government, he also raised many flaws in the new nomination system. “There is perhaps room for thinking of a Kafkaesque doorway,” wrote Coleman in his judgement.

Any improvement may turn out to be moot, observers say. After the election, the government appointed all new District Councillors onto their respective nomination committees, meaning the incumbents will be directly responsible for gatekeeping candidates for the 2027 election.

Amongst other proposals in its report, EAC calls on the government to change the name of the election from the “District Council Ordinary Election” to the “District Council General Election”.

And EAC also vented some criticism on candidates who failed to provide sufficient information on themselves and their platforms.

Under election law, candidates are not obliged to provide machine-readable (text-based) information about themselves and, for the 2023 election, only 12% of candidates provided any text-based information. Only 8% supplied information in English and Chinese. Many candidates simply supplied photos of their handwritten name, age and political affiliation.

This was a dramatic reduction in transparency from the 2019 election, where almost 40% of candidates provided “machine readable” text-based introductions to themselves and 19% provided their information in both Chinese and English.

The government last week revealed it had spent $1.2 billion on the election, achieving a record-low turnout of just 27.5%.

None of almost 20 “geographically elected” district councillors across three districts contacted for this story responded.