Use of the new open-list balloting system in the proportional representation segment of the July 29 Upper House election has exposed a number of defects. The basic flaw is that it favors candidates from major parties, particularly those who count on organized votes.

The open-list system, as opposed to the closed-list system, allows voters either to select from numbers of candidates prepared on a party-by-party basis or to vote for parties of their choice. One problem, as many voters must have found, is that it is a bother to pinpoint the name of a favored candidate -- if there is one -- on a lengthy list printed in small type. In the last election, a total of 204 candidates ran in the PR constituency.

Still, it was a bother worth taking for those who had particular candidates in mind -- and for those who did not vote for parties, that was the only alternative unless they decided to abstain. The statistics show a majority of voters chose parties, suggesting that they had no personal preferences for or no reasonable knowledge of individual candidates.

For example, of 21 million votes garnered by the Liberal Democratic Party in the PR division, including those cast for its candidates, 15 million carried the party name. The Democratic Party of Japan, the largest opposition group, collected 9 million votes, of which 6 million were cast for the party itself.

There is much room for improvement in the way the rosters are displayed at polling booths. But resolving such technical problems is the easy part. The hard part is attacking problems in the open-list system. The basic problem is that it makes it difficult to accurately reflect the will of the electorate.

The system is the product of political compromise, particularly of partisan maneuvering in an LDP that was roiled by a campaign scandal last summer. The scandal, which led to the resignation of a Cabinet minister, was blamed on the closed-list system, which allowed parties to decide the rankings of candidates in advance. It was alleged that the minister had won a seat in the Upper House by buying a top spot on the list.

Pressures to introduce the open-list formula increased as the plummeting popularity of former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori raised concerns that the LDP might lose the next Upper House election. That system was expected to produce large numbers of organized voters for the governing party. With the election around the corner, the LDP pushed an electoral reform bill through the Diet.

Following Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's debut, public support for the LDP increased dramatically. But the party did not change its policy of limiting the number of PR candidates. It continued to give top priority to those backed by industry associates, such as former government bureaucrats. Celebrity candidates, such as TV personalities, would play second fiddle to old-time candidates. The large number of votes cast for the party, thanks largely to Koizumi's extraordinary popularity, was distributed mainly among the old-timers.

For the LDP, the election was also a factional contest in which many candidates were supported by industry groups with close ties to intraparty factions. The paradox is that many "special-interest candidates" were elected despite the fact that they were (and still are) opposed not only to Koizumi's structural reforms but also to his calls for breaking up factions. On the other hand, one candidate who left a faction in response to that appeal was reduced to fighting a lonely, losing battle.

The open-list system has demonstrated that it decidedly favors large parties. Mr. Katsuhiro Shirakawa, who ran on the ticket of the new party Freedom and Hope, lost although he won 310,000 votes. By the same token, Mr. Yukio Aoshima, a member of the Ni-in Club and former governor of Tokyo, also failed though he won 280,000.

By contrast, Ms. Haruko Yoshikawa of the Japanese Communist Party was elected with just 26,000 votes -- the smallest number won by a successful candidate. Clearly, something is wrong with the open-list formula. It is based on a proposal made in 1990 by a government council on election systems. The main purpose was to revitalize the Upper House and make it an effective counterweight to the influential Lower House.

That goal now looks more distant than it did back then. Instead of establishing its raison d'etre as the "House of good sense," the House of Councilors has become increasingly vulnerable to the pressures of partisan politics, and more and more of its members have grouped themselves along factional lines. It is high time to start serious efforts to put the House in order. That is one of the most important lessons of the latest election, in which PR candidates were selected under the open-list system for the first time.