Voting in Japanese public elections
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| (This diagram assumes two votes. There may be more or less) |
The House of Councillors is the upper house of the bicameral parliament, and Councillors serve for six years, with half of the Councillors coming up for election every three years. This means that every three (3) years half (121 Councillors out of a total of 242) come up for election.
When you vote for the House of Councillors, you vote two times: once for one person representing your local Constituency district (選挙区) and once for the national Proportional Representation (比例区). 73 Councillors are direct elected by the 47 prefectures (都道府県) constituency districts and the remaining 48 are voted nationally by the proportional representation system.
Because there are more candidates to be elected (73) than there are prefectures (47) in Japan, this means that each prefecture's citizens vote-in one or more Councillor, depending on the prefecture's population:
- Elects five Councillors every three years:
- Tōkyō
- Elects four Councillors every three years:
- Ōsaka Prefecture (Ōsaka City)
- Kanagawa Prefecture (Yokohama City); neighboring Tōkyō
- Elects three Councillors every three years:
- Saitama Prefecture; neighboring Tōkyō
- Chiba Prefecture; neighboring Tōkyō
- Aichi Prefecture (Nagoya City)
- Elects two Councillors every three years:
- Kyōto Prefecture (Kyōto City); neighboring Ōsaka
- Hyōgo Prefecture (Kōbe City); neighboring Ōsaka
- Hiroshima Prefecture (Hiroshima City)
- Fukuoka Prefecture (Fukuoka City)
- Hokkaidō Prefecture (Sapporo City)
- Ibaraki Prefecture
- Niigata Prefecture
- Nagano Prefecture (Nagano City)
- Shizuoka Prefecture
- Miyagi Prefecture
- Elects one Councillor every three years:
- the remaining 31 prefectures
- You can vote directly for a political party by writing a the full name of the party — ex. 自由民衆党 (Liberal Democratic Party) — or the official abbreviated name of the party — ex. 自民党 (Lib Dems / LDP). You vote counts as a vote for that party, with the preference for which particular candidate not being specified.
- You can vote for a specific person within one of the parties by writing either their official full name in Japanese or writing their official alias (which is usually the same as their official full name except for part or all of their name in 仮名 (Japanese syllabet) instead of harder to write 漢字 (Japanese sinograms). Your vote counts as a vote for that party, with a preference for a specific candidate.
Explanation for those whose countries who don't have PR: the reason for "proportional representation" is that it gives a reasonable chance for minor and less powerful political parties to actually have representation. Without PR, the "winner-take-all" system usually means that only two political parties gain any real power (for example, the U.S. Democrats and Republicans) and the minor parties (U.S. Libertarians, etc) never get any seats. Some democracies see it as important for minor political parties to have some system for getting a few seats as the minors fulfill an important role as a "watchdog" for the major parties.This "open list" system is relatively new, by the way. It was introduced in 2001 and its Constitutionality was affirmed by the Japan Supreme Court in 2004. Prior to 2001, Japan used "closed list" (厳正拘束名簿式), which means that voters select the party for PR and they have no influence as to exactly which members from each party get chosen.
How to Vote in Japan
After you naturalize, voting for your first time can be both an empowering feeling (after all those years of being in Japan, you finally get to participate in its democracy!) and frightening as you're an adult and you want to behave like all the other Japanese adults voting and not act like you've never done this before in your life.Fortunately, Japanese voting is intentionally designed to be very simple with minimal effort required on your part. Here's how it's done.
Get 投票所入場整理券 (polling place entrance tickets) in the mail
Once you become a Japanese national, you do not have to do anything special to begin voting. By registering at your local city hall or ward office (市役所／区役所), your Residency Registration (住民票) gets created and filed in the vital records for your town, and from that information they know if you're a Japanese national and what your home address is. |
| this ticket allows voting for one upper house constituency (都選出) representative and one national proportional representative (比例代表) |
About a couple weeks before an election, you will receive a letter in the mail addressed to the household that will contain 投票所入場整理券 (polling place entrance ticket) for all the members of your household that can vote, as well as instructions with a map as to where to vote. Most likely this place will be a public school or another public facility. Voting is usually done on a Sunday and the polling place is usually open from 7am for over twelve hours. They will make sure the polling place is handicapped accessible, having booths for the physically handicapped and blind and ramps for wheelchairs.
If you cannot make it on voting day, Japan allows you to vote early (usually at an alternate public center near where your regular polling place is, depending on how close it is to election day) up to three weeks in advance. You don't need a good excuse; if you happen to know you're shopping that day, that's an acceptable excuse. There are instructions for special procedures for voting if you're in hospitalized, etc., and unable to make it to the polling place included.
What to wear and etiquette at the voting station
There's a joke amongst Tokyoites that only noobs dress up to go to the polls, and it is only at the polls where you can see men who you oridinally never see outside of the house in anything less than a button-down shirt dressed down.As the polling place is chosen to be geographically close to where you live and the elections are held on a day that's usually a work holiday such as Sunday, almost everyone walks to the polling place from their home.
Mothers and fathers who bring children with them will usually wait outside the school or public place with them and take turns, although bringing your young children in with you is not prohibited. Bringing a friend or adult or non-voter along with you is prohibited once you're past reception.
Finally, there are signs around the voting booth indicating that video and still photography is strictly prohibited, and food and drink is discouraged.
As part of a special voting protocol, if you arrive very early before the polling officially starts, you an the public are allowed to observe and inspect the steel locked voting box in its open state along with the official administrators and witnesses and verify that it is empty.
Get information about the candidates on the internet
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| JCP: "protect Constitution's Article 9" |
- timed one-on-one speeches on public television and radio, with no special graphics or debating going on
- posters of a particular size, that are places on temporary billboards across the country. You were assigned a space (a numbered square about 1.5m²) on plywood temporary billboards all across the country. Private citizens, exercising their constitutional right to freedom of expression, could post your posters on their property, but politicians couldn't make or coerce them to do this.
- Campaigning with sound trucks (街宣車) and megaphones in areas where mass amounts of people gather. This usually means the front of train stations, or in a moving truck with loudspeakers on the roof traveling down a highway.
As of April 2013, candidates are now permitted to use the internet: social media, blogs, and web sites. The only thing currently they are not allowed to do is email (for fear of spam abuse).
Last month was the first election to use the internet for getting campaign messages across. Hopefully it's popularity and usage will increase to the point where sound trucks (which until net campaigning were a necessary evil to get name recognition) will not be needed much anymore, as they are disliked by both Japanese and non-Japanese.
Show your 投票所入場整理券 (polling place ticket) for a ballot
Most of the time, the polling place will not be that crowded. Sadly, participation in national elections these days is not that high; turnout of 50% or less is not uncommon. As the Constitution of Japan permits freedom of expression (Article 21), this freedom of expression also means that people are free to not express themselves by not voting. Thus, they cannot pass a law making it mandatory to vote, as that would probably be ruled by the supreme court as being unconstitutional.
they check your name and ticket
before you get your first ballot
In my experience, going in the afternoon or late afternoon, there was rarely more than a dozen people in front of me in line. And they could process about one person every dozen (12) or so seconds. In the last three elections, I've had to wait less than five minutes to vote.
You do not need to bring any sort of identification, proof of citizenship, or voter registration (you do have to show up in person, though). Upon presenting your ticket to the receptionist, the bar code will be scanned and they will confirm the name on the ticket.
You will then show your ticket to the ballot issuer, who will cross off on your ticket that you've received one ballot for one election and press a button on a special machine that will issue exactly one ballot and no more. That ballot will be color coded to the particular election; for example, the upper house constituency representation ballot was cream and the proportional representative ballot was white. This prevents someone from using a ballot for the wrong election.
The "no more than one per person" machine
Brief instructions will be on the ballot and a 印鑑 (official seal) will be printed on the ballot to make forgeries more difficult.Getting in and following the line in order
Most likely the polling area will be a wide open area. Probably a school auditorium as in my case. There will literally be a green road (a green non-slip plastic mat rolled across a basketball court floor). In addition to making sure you don't slip on a wet floor, it's also designed to make sure you know how to do the steps in order: follow green mat to place where you get ballot; continue to follow green mat to place where you write on the ballot; continue to follow green mat to place where you drop ballot in box; continue to follow green vinyl mat to the place where you get your second ballot (if necessary); follow green mat to the second place where you write on the ballot; follow the green mat to the second ballot box; (repeat as necessary); finally, follow the green mat to the exit.
Follow the green vinyl road! Go to the voting booth (投票記載台)
Compared to the voting technology used in most places in the United States for national or local elections, the technology used in Japan is decidedly minimalist.
There is a "cheat sheet" with candidate names
and parties inside each booth
There are no huge curtains to draw around you or private booths. There are simply waist-high lines of desks with baffles separating them to make it slightly difficult to peer over to the left or right and see what the other person is writing.
Inside the booth, there will be a piece of paper with a list of all the names and parties of the candidates you are eligible to vote for, so you don't have to worry about remembering how to write a particular candidates name or remembering who is running for what election. The list of names will not have any pictures of the candidates, nor will it list their political positions. It will not list their political party if the political party is considered to be irrelevant for the position (for example, for a judicial position).
It's safe to say that all of the material provided will be in the Japanese language only, although all the names will have 振り仮名 (simpler Japanese script next to characters in a smaller font to aid in reading) ruby on top of the 漢字 (Japanese sinograms) so that phonetically reading any of the names shouldn't be a problem. The script in my opinion could be printed in a larger font size, but that's just me.
Inside the booth a plain pencil will be provided (although strangely, no eraser). There are no time limits, but obviously if you take too long an official may come up and ask you if you are having difficulty.
There is a booth or two set aside for those with special needs. For example, one will have the candidate name list in Japanese Braille (点字) for the blind.Writing the candidate/party's name on the ballot (投票用紙)
There are no multiple choice checkboxes for selecting a person's name, chad to punch through, or any other "foolproof" system that other countries use to prevent identification of the secret ballot by handwriting analysis or to provide aid to the illiterate that can't handwrite.
Each election during the same day will be
a different color so you can't put the wrong ballot
in the wrong voting box
To vote for a person, you simply write, using the provided standard pencils (鉛筆), the person's name or political party — in the case of 比例区 (proportional representation) — in Japanese vertical writing style (縦書き), within the box provided on the left side of the ballot. The right side of the ballot will identify the election that the ballot is for and provide very brief and concise instructions as to what and how you should write.
You need to write clearly and legibly enough for a human to understand it and read it without confusion, otherwise it will be discarded. This means no 行書 (semi-cursive like sinogram writing) or 草書 (cursive-like sinogram writing), no 略字 (abbreviated or simplified sinogram characters), and no 簡体字 (Chinese simplified forms), 旧字体 (old/archaic sinogram forms) or 繁体字 (Chinese traditional sinogram forms) are allowed, unless the candidate itself uses those characters. You must use modern 新字体 (modern Japanese sinogram forms) when writing. That shouldn't be a problem for most contemporary 21st century Japanese users.
It is unlikely that a candidate would be allowed to use a name that had characters outside the characters permitted for name (there is a list of permitted characters) — nor would a candidate be allowed to use a form of a name that would be easily confused with another candidate.
While your handwriting will not be judged as strictly as the 日本漢字能力検定 (Japanese Kanji Aptitude Test) in that they will not discard your ballot if your 書き順 (sinogram stroke order) is incorrect or your strokes do not perfectly jump or terminate properly or fail to touch or slightly cross other strokes. However, most likely using the wrong radical (部首) or wrong number of strokes (画数) would cause you ballot to be discarded as invalid if your intent could not be unambiguously determined.
Writing any candidates name in any style of ローマ字 (Japanese transliterated into Latin letters) is not permitted and invalid.Why politician's names (given or family) are sometimes written in 仮名 (Japanese syllabet) rather than 漢字 (Japanese sinograms)
Politicians names are written both in ads and on the ballot in the simpler 46 character Japanese syllabet (either ひらがな or カタカナ) for two reasons:
Changing one's name to a different Japanese script
makes your name stand out, and makes it easier for
voters to remember and write by hand.- The first is for differentiation. If there are many Suzuki's running (both in the past and presently) for example, you may want to do your name as すすき or スズキ instead of the standard 鈴木. This is not just so people don't confuse you with another Suzuki running, but also to differentiate yourself from a Suzuki that may have become associated with negative feelings by the voters.
- Another reason politicians write their name in 仮名 (Japanese syllabet) script is because it is often faster and simpler to write via hand on the ballot. For example:
- 鈴木 in 漢字 has seventeen (17) strokes (画数)
- すずき in ひらがな has ten (10) strokes (画数)
- スズキ in カタカナ has nine (9) strokes (画数)
There is another reason why name differentiation is important: in the event that the completed ballot is ambiguous and can't be determined which of multiple candidates it goes to (for example, two candidates with the last name 山田 are running and use the exact same all 漢字 name, and the voter fails to write the given name, then the vote is split between the two potential candidates, weighted by the amount of unambiguous votes they received. This is called "proportional fraction votes" (按分票).
Insert the ballot (投票用紙) into the the voting box (投票箱)
After you've written the name of your candidate or party on the ballet, you then follow the green mat to the ballot box. Before you travel there, you may choose to fold up your ballot. The ballot is made out of a special material that will cause it to slowly unfold over time to make it easier for the people tallying the votes to read them. You can insert your ballot into the ballot box folded or unfolded. The only requirement is that however you fold it, it must fit into the slit on the top of the ballot box.
Voting fraud prevention technology is simple and
old fashioned, but effective
The ballots will be read by humans, not by any OCR or computer/machine technology. It's still important to write in big, clear letters in 活字 (practical easy to read plain form handwriting). The vote counters will be using machines obviously to help keep track of the vote tally.Repeat from first step as necessary
After you've inserted your ballot into the box, you will probably follow the green mat to another area and repeat the process all over again. For the last lower house (House of Representatives; 衆議院) election, one voted three times at the polling places in Tokyo: once for your representative, once for a replacement seat in the local Tokyo Assembly, and once for the judges for the higher courts.
Every time you come to a new booth to get a new ballot, they will mark your polling place ticket so you can't vote twice. Also, every ballot is a different color and marked as to what election it is for so you can't insert dummy ballots and/or save up your official ballots for the last election and put all the ballots in one box.
For the final vote at the polling place, they will not mark, but instead take your polling place ticket, so you can't bring it home with you as a souvenir.
Once you're done, you follow the green mat to the exit. Sorry, you don't get any reward after you've done it. No lollipop. No "I voted" sticker.
Congrats, you've now voted in Japan's democracy!
What do they do with the ballots after they're counted?
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| Voting ballots are not paper. They are recycled just like plastic. |
It's made out of a special plastic based compound that has two special properties.
The first property involves the ballot's inability to hold a crease for a long time: when folded in half, it has a tendency to want to unfold. Most people, after they write their candidate's name, like to fold the ballot in half and carry it and insert it that way into the ballot box for privacy.
Once in the box, the paper will naturally try to unfold. While it won't completely unfold, it will unfold enough. This makes vote counting much easier after the polls close. The official counters do not need to unfold as many votes to read them.
The second property that the ballots have is that after they've been tallied and verified, they are first shredded to a pulp, then that pulp is turned into pellets, and those pellets are used to make recycled goods. Just like PET plastic bottles from Japanese vending machines: the ballots are a form of polyester!
Is Voter / Ballot Fraud Common?
There was one candidate in the last upper house election, 犬丸かつこ, a former elementary school teacher running as an independent, whose entire one-theme campaign was about fraudulent elections (不正選挙) and campaigned for exactly one day, posting her campaign posters at the last minute on the public service billboards for elections in slot #17.
She lost. Fair & square.
The Future: electronic voting booths
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| a U.S. portable electronic voting machine |
Since 2002, electronic voting machines (電子投票) have been allowed by law, and Japan has experimented with it. 岡山県新見市 (Niimi City, Okayama Prefecture) did the first exclusive test run of the technology for their elections for mayor for about 25 minutes. More recently, Tokyo's 上京区 (Kamigyō Ward/Special City) and 東山区 (Higashiyama Ward/Special City) also tested it in 2012 for their mayor elections for twelve (12) and nine (9) minutes each without paper backup} For now, though, almost all of the elections are still done the old fashioned way, as there hasn't been much problem with either accuracy or efficiency of the hand-written ballot method.
Voting via the internet is being discussed, but it has not been made legal yet.
Naturalized Japanese Citizens that are Politicians
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| Left-to-right: Tsurunen, Bianki, and Heizu |
- ヘイズ・ジョン
- originally Jon Heese, born in the province of Manitoba in Canada and grew up in Saskatchewan.
- a city councilman in 茨城県つくば市 (Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture)
- a member/contributor to this blog
- ビアンキ アンソニー
- originally Anthony Bianchi from Brooklyn, New York City
- city councilman in 愛知県犬山市 (Inuyama City, Aichi Prefecture)
- as of 2013, on his 3rd term (re-elected twice)
- ツルネン・マルテイ
- originally Martti Turunen from Lieksa of Eastern Finland
- began as an independent, later joined the DPJ (民衆党)
- first person of western European descent to serve in the Japan Diet, served two terms starting from 2002 to 2013.
- Served as national representative from 神奈川県 (Kanagawa Prefecture) under proportional representation, living in 足柄下郡湯河原町 (town of Yugawara, Ashigarashimo county)
