Hong Kong starts tallying poll results; Duterte jumps to lead

The Special Board of Canvassers tallies votes from HK,Macau,Taiwan and Beijing.

Rodrigo Duterte jumped into an early lead in Hong Kong as officals started tallying the votes in the month-long presidential elections that began on April 9.

With four precincts reported as of 8pm tonight, comprising 3,795 votes, Duterte got 2,587 votes based on early results from the Consolidation and Canvassing System.

The remainder was shared by the other candidates, namely, Miriam Santiago 447, Mar Roxas 353, Grace Poe 260 and Jejomar Binay 80.

Poll watchers are gearing up for a long night at the Bayanihan Center in Kennedy Town, with a toal of 95 Sd cards to be tallied just for Hong Kong alone. Also to be canvassed will be the election results of Macau, Taiwan and the rest of China.

Philippine officials in Beijing, Macau and Taiwan joined the special board of canvassers (SBOC) in Hong Kong headed by Deputy Consul General Christian de Jesus.

The process began with turning on the computer to be used in the tallying at about 6:30 pm. De Jesus showed that all the candidates had zero votes. 

Vice Consul Alex Vallespin said the Consul General in Macau, Lilibeth Deapera, as well as a representative of the Embassy in Beijing and the Manila Economic and Cultural Office in Taiwan will be in Hong Kong to joint the count. 

The first results on Hong Kong came in at 6:55 pm in the form of an SD card from SBEI (Special Board of Election Inspectors) 3, the first of 95 such cards generated in Hong Kong.