Reform of Lower House Election System Discussed

While coalition partner of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Japan Innovation Party (JIP), insists on reduction of Diet seats, the parties discuss reform of election system. The chairman of multi-partisan conference for election system in the House of Representatives, Keisuke Suzuki (LDP), offered a draft of new system that laid out stricter standard for resurrection in proportional district. Some measures to conciliate opposition parties are also included in the draft.

Lower House election has two districts. One is single-seat districts amounting to 289 allocated to all over Japan. Another is proportional district with 176 seats, which is distributed to parties depending on the votes they obtained. Most candidates are nominated in both districts. Even if one candidate loses in single-seat district, he or she can get a seat in proportional district. How the candidate was close to the winner in the single-seat district determines who will win the seat in proportional district among the candidates in the slate of the party.

 

Currently, a winner in proportional district who lost in a single-seat district needs to achieve at least one-tenth of all the valid votes. The draft made by Suzuki raised the ratio from one-tenth to one-sixth. The rule is supposed to work against small parties, because a small party is unlikelier to get large amount of votes in each single-seat district than major parties do. If the candidate loses to the winner with a big margin in single-seat district, he or she may not get the seat in proportional district.

 

In the Lower House election in February, the LDP gave their seats away to other parties, because the LDP won more seats in proportional district than the number of candidates they nominated in the slate. The draft proposes not to give the seat to other parties, but to leave the excessive seats vacant. To make every party easier to field candidates, reduction of deposit for each candidate is also considered.

 

The draft includes another rule which will work for small parties. It is considered in the draft that the calculation to distribute seats to parties should be changed so that small parties can obtain certain benefit. The LDP and JIP promotes reduction of seats in proportional district in Lower House election, which is working against small parties. The draft seems to have balanced between seat reduction and distribution of seats in the election.

 

Although the LDP and JIP hopes to pass a bill to reduce Lower House seats in extraordinary session of the Diet this fall, the draft did not refer to the seat reduction. While it has been a problem for a long time that a winner in proportional district changes party affiliation after winning the seat, the draft did not make a proposal for the issue. The reform seems to be defying fundamental reform and driven by each party’s benefit.

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