An electronic counting system will be used for functional constituency ballots in the upcoming Legislative Council general election, Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Erick Tsang said.

This came as the Registration and Electoral Office revealed that the budget for the election, to be held on December 7, would be HK$1.2 billion.

Another HK$200 million would be needed for the Election Committee subsector by-elections on September 7.

Speaking at a meeting of the Legco constitutional affairs panel on Monday, Tsang said the government attaches great importance to the two elections.

The government will adopt optimising measures, including the implementation of an e-counting system for the Legco election’s functional constituency ballots to boost efficiency, he said.

Procurement of the system has been completed, he added, and testing work is under way.

“As this is a new system, to ensure the vote counting process will not encounter any error or impedance, we will formulate different backup plans," Tsang said.

"Besides the main counting system, we have a backup system. If the main system fails, we will activate the backup system immediately. Only when both systems fail will we fall back on manual counting.

“Frankly speaking, the probability of both systems encountering a failure is very low, but still, it can happen, so we will still make a backup plan.”

Tsang also said the government hopes to increase voter turnout through promotional work.

But he said it would be “unrealistic” to set a target for the voting rate.