Editorial

16:06 JST, August 10, 2025

Trust in elections will be undermined if local government officials, who are in a position to oversee fair elections, have tried to arbitrarily adjust the number of votes.

A thorough investigation should be conducted to uncover the facts. It will also be necessary to severely punish the officials involved.

It has been discovered that during vote counting in Ota Ward, Tokyo, for the House of Councillors election, about 2,600 invalid votes were added to the results in both the electoral district and the proportional representation segment. This is suspected to be a violation of the Public Offices Election Law, namely voting manipulation.

According to the ward, a mistake was made in connection with the absentee voting system, which is used by........

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