THE Hong Kong Electoral Affairs Commission announced at early today that the counting of ballots for the third-term District Council election was completed and named 364 winners in contested constituencies.

The announcement by the Electoral Affairs Commission came around 4:45am as it took more than five hours to complete the ballot counting, which began at 10:30pm yesterday.

More than 1.14 million registered voters cast their votes in the election for the third-term District Council in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, about 70,000 more than during the 2003 election, according to the Electoral Affairs Commission.

Hong Kong has 18 District Councils and the third-term District Councils are composed of 534 members, including 405 elected members, 102 appointed members and 27 ex-officio members.

Candidates in 41 of the 405 constituencies have been elected unopposed while the remaining 364 seats in the 18 District Councils were contested by 866 candidates.

The District Council election adopts the first-past-the post voting system, under which the candidate who receives the largest number of votes will be elected. All Hong Kong permanent residents aged 18 or above who are ordinarily residing in Hong Kong are eligible to vote.

The functions of district councils include advising the government on matters affecting the well-being of the people in the district and the use of public funds allocated to the district for local public works and community activities.

Voters, including the Chief Executive Donald Tsang, flooded to 480 polling stations to cast their votes starting on Saturday morning.

"The polling for our third-term District Council has come to a successful ending," said Tsang.

"The election shows citizens in Hong Kong have good traditions and the election system has been respected," Tsang said, "I hope the new elected District Council members try their best in their work to help the government build more harmonious and more beautiful communities."

The term of office for the third term district councils will commence run from January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2011.