E-voting in Japan

[Rodney Van Meter]

>From Sunday's Daily Yomiuri:
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20070527TDY03003.htm
The last sentence is by far the most intriguing, and I wish I knew more.
E-voting system eyed for national elections

The Yomiuri Shimbun

An electronic voting system using touch-screen panels likely will be
phased in for national elections starting from next year, it has been
learned.

The ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito is
eyeing the new system after New Komeito reversed its initially cautious
stance and decided to support the move, according to sources.

The ruling parties will submit a bill to revise the special law for the
Public Offices Election Law in the current Diet session, which will
stipulate Jan. 1, 2008, as the date for the law's enforcement, the
sources said.

However, the electronic voting system will not be introduced
simultaneously in all municipalities.

Among municipalities that already have ordinances allowing the use of
electronic ballots for mayoral and assembly elections, the internal
affairs and communications minister will choose municipalities based on
applications received from election boards.

Currently, eight municipalities have such an ordinance.

The use of electronic polling systems for local elections became
possible in February 2002, since when it has been used for 15 elections
held in 10 municipalities.

The result of one election that employed the system was nullified after
errors were detected in the electronic voting machines.

=====

Last week there was an article about quick election results here.  In
prefectural (state) elections, some towns returned their results in as
little as 20 minutes even when using hand-counted paper ballots!  (Some
other municipalities ranged as high as a couple of hours.)

One simple expedient is that when you go to vote, you are given separate
ballots for each office you are voting for.  Then returns for any given
office are a simple matter of sorting the ballots into one stack per
candidate, and counting the stacks.

To me, this would seem to make ballot challenges more difficult.  There
may also be additional opportunities for various forms of fraud --
ballot box stuffing, etc. depending on the protocols used.

But it does appear to have the advantage of being efficient.  If paper
ballot results can be returned in so little time, what is the incentive
for electronic balloting?

		--Rod

(P.S.  Speaking of elections, did you know that department chairs and
even the presidents of universities here are chosen by direct election
among the faculty?  There are campaign speeches and balloting at an
all-faculty meeting.)




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