An unofficial "referendum" that polled Hong Kong residents on the electoral method to be used to select the city's next chief executive, which was slammed by the authorities as "lacking constitutional grounds," ended on Sunday night, as both sides waited for comments from the government before making their next move.

A total of 787,767 votes were counted, after more than 10,000 repeat votes were deducted, according to Robert Chung, director of the Hong Kong University public opinion center.

Chung admitted that many people had used a fake ID or voted repeatedly.

"I hope people from all walks of life can cherish methods of peacefully expressing their will," he said at a press conference after the end of the voting.

All options involved public nominations, but the most votes, 42.1 percent, went to a proposal by the Alliance for True Democracy, in which Hong Kong's next chief would be nominated by the public and political parties as well as a nomination committee.

At press time, the final voting tally had not been released.

The vote, organized by protest group Occupy Central with Love and Peace, which was run by the HKU public opinion program, started on June 20.

The central government has criticized all three options, saying they do not follow the Basic Law of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, which mandates a nominating committee.

Tai Yiu-ting, one of the organizers of the Occupy Central movement, told the Global Times that they will wait for the government's official electoral draft after submitting the referendum results and also consider a second phase consultation within the pro-democracy groups.

"The government should listen to and care about public opinion," he said.

Another two of the main pro-democracy groups also said they would "give a chance" to the Hong Kong government to react to the results.

In interviews with the Global Times, the organizers of the two main pro-democracy groups in Hong Kong, the Civil Human Rights Front and the Hong Kong Federation of Students, said they would see what the government says about the results to decide whether to start the Occupy Central movement on July 1.

However, many experts and local residents said they did not believe the results of the vote, which they said was inaccurate and had too many loopholes, and thus was not worth being used as a basis for formulating policy.

On Sunday afternoon nearly 500 people joined the march from Causeway Bay to the Hong Kong Police Headquarters in Wanchai from 2 pm to "support strict enforcement of the law" by the Hong Kong police and to "arrest" the three main organizers of the Occupy Central movement.

Protest group Caring for Hong Kong Power, the organizer of the march, said it had submitted files with the signatures of 300,000 Hong Kong residents, who were opposed to activities like Occupy Central.

"We collected the signatures, all by real people in the real world, unlike those votes accumulated in the virtual world," Lee Ka-ka, the spokeswoman of the organization, said.

Lee said the referendum has been labeled as "supporting democracy and universal suffrage" so many citizens went to vote.

"Hong Kong people are mostly pro-democratic and they [pro-democracy activists] are taking advantage of that clear point to work for their political campaigns," said Chow Yung, one of the organizers of Silent Majority of Hong Kong, another group opposing Occupy Central.

The pro-democracy groups had the last day to try to "canvass" more votes. Except for the 15 voting stations that opened on June 22, nine more were opened on Sunday and the groups have been mobilizing their members to all 21 stations to appeal for votes.

The Global Times reporters at voting stations on Causeway Bay, Hong Kong University and the City University of Hong Kong all heard appeals like "you should go vote no matter whether you prefer our electoral method or not," and "Hong Kong people should show their pro-democracy attitude."

About 10 elderly people showed up at the Cattle Depot station in Kowloon holding banners that read in Cantonese "Hong Kong needs stability." At another station outside Saint Peter's Church, around 10 men wearing blue masks tried to stop residents from entering the station.

Yeung Ching-yin, convener of the pro-democracy group Civil Human Rights Front and the organizer of every year's July 1 pro-democracy protest, said there might be over 500,000 people participating given the current situation.

Chan Kin-man, associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and one of the three organizers of the Occupy Central movement, called for all voters to participate in the July 1 rally so as to turn virtual votes into physical votes.

"They [democracy activists] claim that voting or protesting is fighting for universal suffrage, but I think the point is that the central authorities and Hong Kong government have promised universal suffrage, so what's the point of their 'fights'?" Lee said.

China's top legislature has given assurances that Hong Kong will see universal suffrage in 2017, with the candidates being nominated by a committee.

Irons Sze, president of the Chinese Manufacturer's Association of Hong Kong, said that Hong Kong is experiencing some challenges in terms of social welfare and economic development.

Tai also admitted that votes increased in the last several days, and this was related to the dissatisfaction that arose because the financial committee of the Legislative Council passed a controversial budget to approve building new towns in the northeastern New Territories of Hong Kong.

The current political instability has already created bad influences in Hong Kong, Tai said.

Read more in Daily Special: Authorities condemn HK 'referendum' as 'invalid and illegal'