With the passage of a bill amending the flawed Public Offices Election Law, the next Lower House election -- which most likely will be held late in June -- promises to be a fairer one. The current system, which was used for the first time in the 1996 Lower House election, is a combination of single-member districts and proportional representation. It proved, however, that the system has several defects.
The changes legislated this time around will solve some of those problems. The election system is the foundation of parliamentary democracy. As such, it must be trusted by the people. In this sense, the updated election system still leaves much to be desired; nonetheless, it is an improvement. One change concerns the so-called "double candidacy," which allows the same candidate to run both from a single-member district and from a PR district. In the last election, some of these candidates lost badly in their single-seat districts but were elected under the PR formula. Under the revised law, any candidate who has failed to collect at least one-tenth of the effective vote in a single-seat district and who has his or her deposit money confiscated will be denied victory as a PR candidate.
Second, by-elections for vacancies in both the Lower and Upper Houses will be held regularly twice a year, in April and October. Third, Lower and Upper House members elected as PR candidates will be prohibited from crossing party lines. In addition, any Diet member who has voluntarily resigned to run for, say, a prefectural governorship will not be allowed to run in a subsequent by-election in his or her former district. And sign-language interpreters -- at candidates' speech meetings, for example -- will be duly compensated.