March 24, 2013

In the Lower House election last December, the ratio of wasted votes to total votes in a single-seat district reached as high as 72.23%.

The Ministry of Internal Affair on March 22 at a meeting of the Lower House special committee on election system, present this fact to Japanese Communist Party parliamentarian Sasaki Kensho.

Among 480 members of the House of Representatives, 300 members are elected from single-seat constituencies and 180 are chosen under the proportional representation system.

In the 2012 general election, 31,637,430 votes or 53.06% of total votes were cast for unsuccessful candidates and consequently wasted in single-seat constituencies.

The ratio of wasted votes in single-seat blocks exceeded 50% in 188 voting districts (62.7% of all districts), and increased by 99 districts from the previous 2009 election. Of them, 76 constituencies (25.3%) had a wasted vote ratio of more than 60%. The Nagano No.1 district marked the highest figure, 72.23%.

Statistics shown above indicate that the single-seat constituency system fails to properly reflect public opinion as the Liberal Democratic Party obtained 79% of single seats with only 43% of votes in the last year’s election.

Related past articles
> LDP gets 79% of single-seats with 43% of votes [December 18, 2012]
> Wasted votes accounted for about 50 percent of votes cast [September 7, 2009]