Thread by @mrjeffu

The voters of Tokyo's Setagaya ward elected 50 assembly members in April. Mitsui Mihoko came in 51st place, losing by less than 2 votes. She has filed for a review of the results, and she may have a good case to make. It's related to why some votes are counted in decimals...

In Japan, voters must hand-write the candidate names on ballots. The candidate who came in 50th place is Ōba Masayosi. But Ōba Tadashi was also a running. Although they both have different kanji, the reading of their name is the same. What if a vote is written in kana?

In such ambiguous cases the vote counters might decide to split the vote between the two candidates. That's why two candidates named Ōba have decimal places in their vote totals. This creates an opportunity for Mitsui to challenge the outcome of the election and possibly win.

AERA has an article up with past examples of similar cases. A 2022 review requested by a Uruma city assembly candidate named "Irei" found that vote counters had invalidated 2 ballots written as "Itei" and "Idei," enough to change the election outcome. dot.asahi.com/dot/2023042800…

Uruma city rejected Irei's claim, but the case was appealed to Okinawa prefectural authorities, who ruled in Irei's favor and changed the election result. Another such case in Tokyo's Katsushika ward also changed the 2017 election results after checking invalidated ballots.

This happens a lot and sometimes involves candidates who only seem to be running to get votes from confused voters. In these cases candidates might ask supporters to carefully write their name in a certain way, or to include the candidate age.

https://twitter.com/mrjeffu/status/1538871989452283905

The hand-written ballot system is also one of the reasons why Japanese election candidates seem to endlessly spam their name from loudspeaker vans during campaigns. The voters will have to write the name on election day and might remember hearing it on the street.

A proxy system exists for people with disabilities who request assistance, with 2 poll workers required to ask them which candidates they want to vote for, writing it on the ballot for them, and confirming that it is correct afterwards. (family members cannot help)

For other voters it's not 100% certain that their ballot will actually be counted for the candidate name they tried to write-in. If they make a spelling/kanji error or have very bad handwriting, their ballot could be invalidated or counted for the wrong candidate.