Chinese local legislature elections completed

China's top legislature said on Tuesday that elections for new lawmakers in all county and township legislatures have been completed. Since early 2011, nearly 600,000 deputies to 2,878 county legislatures and 1.9 million deputies to 33,281 township legislatures have been elected, according to a statement issued by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC). According to NPC statistics, more than 981 million people registered to vote in the county-level elections, while 723 million registered for the township-level elections. Over 90 percent of the registrants cast votes. The statement highlighted achievements in safeguarding the rights of the country's vast floating population, or those who are not living at their registered permanent residence. After being notified via fax, text message or e-mail, "a considerable amount of migrants" returned home to vote, with many others entrusting friends at home to vote on their behalf, the statement said. It further specified that entrusted votes amounted to 80.76 million at the county level and 67.22 million at the township level, accounting for 8.23 and 9.29 percent of each group of voters, respectively. However, votes cast by migrants are still few in number due to high travel costs and the complexity of entrusting procedures.