Errors in Election Administration: Lax Checks Risk Undermining Credibility

Editorial

14:59 JST, July 15, 2025

The upcoming House of Councillors election has seen a number of errors in election administration by local governments. Elections are the foundation of democracy. Each local government must take the importance of every ballot to heart and must thoroughly adopt measures to prevent errors from occurring.

In the city of Koga, Fukuoka Prefecture, a mistake occurred in which the list of political parties and candidates for the proportional representation segment posted at an early voting site included fictitious party and candidate names.

The mistake was made when municipal staffers mistakenly posted test data for a simulation created by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry. A similar error also occurred in Kanagawa Ward, Yokohama.

In the town of Oe, Yamagata Prefecture, when posting enlarged copies of lists of parties and their candidates, staff accidentally placed a copy of a sheet listing one party and its candidates over the sheet listing another party and its candidates, rendering the latter party’s information invisible. Mistakes in handing out the wrong ballot slips for the constituency segment and proportional representation race to voters also continue to occur.

In all of these cases, insufficient checking was to blame. This is a situation that undermines the credibility of elections. It could fuel misinformation on social media suggesting that election results are being intentionally manipulated. Local governments must conduct a thorough review of their systems ahead of the voting and vote counting next Sunday.

In the past, the nationwide number of errors in upper house elections was usually in the double digits. But in the 2019 and 2022 upper house elections, the figure reached about 200 cases. One reason for this situation is that it has become necessary to assign local government staffers with insufficient specialized knowledge and experience to do hands-on election administration work due to the retirement of staffers with expertise in election administration and a shortage of personnel.

With the declining population, the number of local government staffers is expected to decrease even further in the future. It is essential to develop human resources who can smoothly carry out election administration in the future.

Local government staffers are subject to periodic transfers, so some workers assigned to election boards move on to their next workplace without having much experience in actual election administration. In some small local governments, staffers from sections such as the general affairs office are tasked with election administration.

The municipal government of Sendai carries out training every year for newly assigned election administration staff, regardless of whether there is an election. The city says the aim is to foster staffers with expertise in election administration from a medium- to long-term perspective.

If it is difficult for a single municipality to implement such a training program on its own, options would be to collaborate with neighboring municipalities to jointly organize a training session or dispatch staffers to assist with actual elections to gain experience.

Voters should also comply with voting rules. Recently, there have been instances in which people who cast early votes take photos of their ballots with their smartphones and post them on social media, urging others to vote for their preferred candidates or political parties.

Under the Public Offices Election Law, election campaigning is permitted only until the day before the election. It should be cautioned that making such a post on election day could constitute a violation of the law.

(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, July 15, 2025)