Casino hub Macau holds informal poll on democracy

Activists in the Chinese casino capital of Macau kicked off an informal poll on Sunday to gauge support for democratic reforms, inspired by a similar vote in Hong Kong that had a big turnout but was denounced by Beijing as an illegal farce. The former Portuguese colony like nearby Hong Kong, is a semiautonomous Chinese region with a leader hand-picked by an elite Beijing-friendly committee. The 400-member committee is widely expected to elect current leader Fernando Chui to another five-year term on Aug. 31, the same day that referendum organizers plan to release the poll results. Before the voting started, Macau's Office for Personal Data Protection, a government agency, handed the Open Macau Society, one of the organizers, a warning letter urging them to stop collecting voters' personal data because it was in violation of the personal data protection ordinance, said the society's president, Jason Chao. The data protection office also told them to delete the information they had collected, he said, according to AP.