Election officials at three polling stations in Kyushu mixed up single-seat and proportional-representation ballots Sunday, affecting 66 voters in Sunday's House of Representatives general election, administrators said.
At a polling station in Kitakyushu, officials mistakenly passed out proportional ballots to 22 voters at a table designated for the distribution of constituency ballots. Voters must write the names of their chosen political parties on the proportional ballots and of individual candidates on the constituency ballots.
The officials recovered ballots from 15 voters before they were cast but were too late to stop the remaining seven, the Kitakyushu election committee said.
Although the Public Office Election Law prohibits voting slips from being reissued — even in the event of administrators issuing the wrong slips — the officials at the polling station gave the seven voters new ballots for the constituency seats, the committee said, adding that the number of constituency votes will therefore outnumber voters who cast ballots at the polling station.