ON-SITE INSTRUCTION: An electoral committee member explains the procedure for filling out a ballot to voters in Lichang Village on December 18, 2011 (LAN XINZHEN)

On December 18, farmers in Lichang Village, Zuoquan County in north China's Shanxi Province, elected the villagers' committee.

According to the Organic Law of Villagers' Committees of China, the villagers' committee is the primary mass organization of self-government, in which the villagers manage their own affairs, educate themselves and serve their own needs and in which election are conducted, decisions adopted, administration maintained and supervision exercised by democratic means. Any villager at or above the age of 18 shall have the right to elect and stand for election.

Last November, an 11-member electoral committee was set up by Lichang villagers to register voters and verify the qualifications of candidates for the new villagers' committee according to law and election rules. The final candidates were announced 10 days ahead of the polling day.

Direct election

When Liu Shengfa came to the polling booth at 9 a.m., he saw many villagers had already arrived. Most of them squatted against the wall, enjoying the sunshine and chatting while waiting for others to arrive. Liu squatted down and joined their conversations.

The snow that had fallen on the village not long ago was still on the roofs, on the roadsides and in the fields. The winters in Shanxi are cold, but the cold weather did not dampen villagers' enthusiasm to vote.

At around 9:30 a.m. the election officially started.

Three members of the electoral committee examined the ballot box, which was made out of a carton once used to hold a desktop computer. The empty carton was coated with red paper. Election supervisors then told villagers how to fill out their ballots.

There were two types of ballots, in pink and yellow. The pink ones were used to elect chairman of the villagers' committee and the yellow ones were for two other committee members who would be selected out of three candidates.

The polling booth was in the office of the villagers' committee, a two-storey building. Voters registered and exchanged their voting certificates for ballots on the first floor. They then went to the second floor to fill out their ballots in either one of the two voting rooms. Only one person was allowed to enter at a time. After filling out their ballots, the voters cast them into the ballot box that was placed in the corner of the corridor, and was guarded by members of the electoral committee.

Very few young people came to the ballot booth. Most of the voters casting ballots were middle-aged and senior residents.

Since proxy voting is legally allowed, almost everyone present at the voting cast ballots on behalf of their absent younger relatives. The 65-year-old Liu said that senior citizens had already called their children working away from home and received agreement on which candidates to vote for.

The voting concluded at 11:30 a.m. There were 368 registered voters in the village and the vote count showed that 363 votes had been cast. The electoral committee announced that the election procedure was legal and the election result would be effective.

The election results were announced at 4 p.m. on the same day. Song Xianglin was unanimously elected as chairman of the villagers' committee, with Fan Lina and Yang Shubao as committee members.

"These are the wishes of the villagers. No government department has the right to tamper with the election procedure or result," said Zhang Feng, Deputy Director of the Publicity Department of the Zuoquan County Committee of the Communist Party of China.

After the election result was announced, the electoral committee was automatically dissolved.