Election Fraud in Tokyo’s Ota Ward: Use Incident As Catalyst for Reviewing Local Government Systems

Editorial

14:29 JST, March 14, 2026

Mistakes and fraud in election administration undermine public trust in elections. Learning from the scandal in Tokyo’s Ota Ward, local governments must improve their election administration systems and strengthen staff training.

The Metropolitan Police Department has sent papers pertaining to four employees who worked for the ward election board to the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office on suspicion of violating the Public Offices Election Law, alleging that they inflated the number of blank ballots in the House of Councillors election in July last year.

During vote counting, a tallying error was discovered in which the number of voters did not match the number of ballots. To conceal this, they allegedly exploited a rule that blank ballots are counted as invalid and inflated the number of blank ballots by more than 2,000 in both the constituency and proportional representation segments.

The secretariat of the election board did not report this to senior officials at the ward office.

There are suspicions that similar vote count manipulation occurred in the 2024 Tokyo gubernatorial election and the 2022 upper house election, raising the possibility that such fraud had become routine.

Election administration requires a balance between accuracy and speed. If accuracy is neglected, it could change the outcome for candidates.

When vote counts do not match, the basic principle is to investigate the cause, even if it takes time. If the secretariat, which is supposed to oversee elections, has repeatedly engaged in fraud, the problem runs deep.

The third-party committee set up to investigate the Ota Ward election board pointed out that this issue represents “a structural problem involving the systems and operations surrounding election administration.”

In recent years, the workload of election administration has increased due to factors such as more people voting early. Among the support staff seconded from other departments, many are unfamiliar with the practical aspects of the work involved in election administration.

This situation is not a distant concern for other local governments. Inflated numbers of blank ballots were uncovered in Takamatsu with regard to the 2013 upper house election and also in Koka, Shiga Prefecture, over the 2017 House of Representatives election. In both cases, just like the incident in Ota Ward, the purpose was to cover up tallying errors.

Each local government should thoroughly review its election administration system and manuals, as well as consider how to improve its method. To prevent fraud, it is also essential to rigorously enforce multi-person checks.

In the February lower house election, cases of alleged fraud were seen across the country, including the arrest of a man who had posted online calling for fraudulent voting and was caught casting ballots at two different early voting stations.

The importance of conducting elections properly is increasing, not least to stop the spread of conspiracy theories on social media claiming such things as the manipulation of voting results.

As seen in the latest lower house election, coordinated responses involving the entire local government are essential to setting up an election system within a short time frame. Local governments are urged to create environments in which all staffers involved in election administration can recognize the importance of elections and become proficient in carrying out their duties, through training and other measures.

(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, March 14, 2026)