A revision to the law on referendums for amending the Constitution is likely to clear the Diet during the current session with joint support from the ruling coalition and several opposition parties.
While the revision completes the legal procedures for holding the popular vote needed to approve changes to the nation's supreme law, the question of whether the minimum voting age for participating in referendums should be allowed to deviate from the legal age for adulthood as well as the minimum age for voting in other elections remains unsettled. It was one of the key issues left unresolved when the original law was enacted in 2007.
The 2007 law — enacted during Shinzo Abe's previous stint as prime minister as the first step in his quest for changing the Constitution— sets the procedures for holding a national referendum on a proposed constitutional amendment, which must be initiated by at least two-thirds of the members in both houses of the Diet. A majority support in the referendum is required to ratify the amendment.