Japanese Elections - Ballots, Voting Machines and Early Voting

Ballots, Voting Machines and Early Voting

Votes in national and most local elections are cast by writing the candidate's or party's name on a blank ballot paper. In elections for the House of Representatives voters fill in two ballots, one with the name of their preferred district candidate and one with their preferred party in the proportional representation block. For the House of Councillors, the district vote is similar (in SNTV multi-member districts, several candidates can be elected, but every voter has only one vote). But in the proportional vote for the House of Councillors votes are cast for a party list (to determine how many proportional seats a party receives) or a candidate (which additionally influences which candidates are elected from a party's list).

Ballots that cannot unambiguously be assigned to a candidate are not considered invalid, but are assigned to all potentially intended candidates proportionally to the unambiguous votes each candidate has received. These so-called "proportional fractional votes" (按分票, ambunhyō) are rounded to the third decimal. For example, if "Yamada A" and "Yamada B" both stood in an election, had received an equal number of unambiguous votes and a voter just wrote "Yamada" on the ballot paper, both Yamadas would get half a vote each; if there were already ten votes for "Yamada A" and five votes for "Yamada B", any vote for "Yamada" would count for Yamada A as two thirds of a vote, and for Yamada B as one third of a vote.

In 2002, passage of an electronic voting law allowed for the introduction of electronic voting machines in local elections. The first machine vote took place in Niimi, Okayama in June 2002. In 2003, a system for early voting (期日前投票制度, kijitsu-mae tōhyō seido) was introduced. In the Japanese general election, 2009 a record number of more than 10 million Japanese voted early.