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by yorwba 2506 days ago
> they are literally protesting for democracy

Protests don't achieve democracy, voting does. If all participants in the recent protests were willing to volunteer, printing a few million ballots and distributing them to improvised polling stations wouldn't be insurmountable. The Hong Kong Identity Card means that voter ID can be implemented without access to government records, simply by assigning a range of ID numbers to each polling station. The only drawback is that they'd need to somehow record who already cast their vote, which could be abused by the government to crack down on participants if they decide to ignore the outcome.
2 comments
kthejoker2 2506 days ago
> Protests don't achieve democracy, voting does.

History strongly begs to differ - assembly to address grievances is just as crucial a step in achieving democracy as a vote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta#Great_Charter_of_1...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid

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yorwba 2506 days ago
The Magna Carta didn't result in anything resembling democracy, so it's not terribly relevant. The civil rights movement and the the end of apartheid may be better examples, but they both involve existing democratic institutions agreeing with the protest movements and passing legislation to fulfill their demands [1, 2].

My point is that although protests are a way to force a vote to occur, it's the actual act of voting that makes a democracy, and protests are neither necessary nor sufficient for that.

It seems to me that the protests in Hong Kong don't have to wait for the government to "allow" them to hold a vote, so long as they can manage the logistics.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_South_African_apartheid_r...

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AnimalMuppet 2506 days ago
Without the protests, when and how are the residents of Hong Kong going to be allowed to vote for democracy?
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yorwba 2506 days ago
Have they tried doing an improvised vote? Even just among protesters, too see what the level of support for certain positions is? I genuinely don't know.

Regarding being allowed to vote, the Hong Kong government is certainly taking a hardliner stance, but I'm not sure whether they could justify it to themselves to criminalize stuffing a piece of paper into a ballot box.

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eric-hu 2505 days ago
Are you aware that people officially voted for pro independence representatives and those representatives were dismissed for being insulting to China?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/14/hong-kong-pro-...

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yorwba 2505 days ago
No, I wasn't, thanks for the information. FWIW, I wasn't suggesting an election within the existing system, where formal requirements like the oath-taking ceremony matter, but rather an improvised referendum with no such restrictions. On a purely legal basis, the government would be free to ignore the results, but in practice that might not be so easy. Since voting requires less effort than participating in a protest march, turnout is more likely to reach a majority of the population.
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