11-year-old accidentally allowed to vote in Japan – her vote will remain valid
A kid was allowed to vote in Osaka yesterday:
The 11-year-old elementary school girl, who visited a poll station in Osaka’s Nishi-Yodogawa Ward with her father, voted for a party in a proportional representation bloc as well as a review of the Supreme Court justices, the election committee said.
Election staff believed the girl, who is relatively tall for her age, was an adult voter. It was only after she finished voting that the staff noticed the error.
As it is impossible to identify the girl’s ballots, they have been regarded valid in accordance with the Public Offices Election Law.
This story really makes one wonder about the quality of the ballots from that ward. Why would staff allow someone to vote before checking their eligibility?
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It makes me wonder about the whole election process in Japan in general. If this happens in one area, then it’s bound to happen in other areas. What other mistakes have been allowed to slip through that didn’t make the news?
Shouldn’t identification have been checked prior to her being allowed to vote, not just for eligibility verification, but to verify that the she hadn’t already voted? Or is it all based on an honor system, that the same person won’t vote multiple times?
There are two different ballots, see my post below. You vote for the district candidate, then you get another ballot and vote for the party of your choice for PR, then you leave. There is usually a “maze” you have to walk through if the voting center is large. If it is small, it is easy to just keep an eye on people as they wander through.
Really? Can anyone just walk in anytime anywhere and vote? I mean, do they check ID at all!
The problem is they verify the voters at one table, and hand out the district seat votes there. After casting that ballot, voters go to another table where they get the proportional representation ballot and the Supreme Court Justice ballots. She walked in with her father, who was registered, they checked him gave him the district seat ballot and waved him through. After casting that ballot he went to the next table with his daughter, they passed him a PR ballot and, seeing who they thought was another adult, they passed her a ballot as well.
Now yes, the crew at the second table screwed up but it wasn’t their job to verify the registered voters who had been verified at the previous table and already cast their ditrict seat vote. And why dad or the girl didn’t say anything I don’t know…
I suppose the solution would be to not let any non-verified people past the first table, but she was a kid under the care of her father.
I somehow felt reminded of those stories about the boarding pass issue at US (and maybe elsewhere) airports (see here for an example article), where you could fly on somebody else’s ticket because not everything (check ID, compare it with boarding pass, scan boarding pass) is/was done at the same checkpoint. Here we have a second table almost blindly giving out documents to whoever made it past the first table, which sort of makes me ask: …why do they even need two tables? Adult people should be smart enough to get ALL the voting material at the first table and then just put them into two different containers. Maybe there is a valid reason for having to do it this way, but then they should’ve taken care to somehow avoid such slip-ups. (Yes, yes, it’s almost impossible to cover every possibility, and you don’t want to completely inconvenience your voters, I know… =/)
If you’ve ever done any kind of large paperwork work with a lot of people you know that there are a few people out there who don’t read signs and don’t put stuff in the right place.
What I’d be more concerned about it the ¥50,000 the workers make at the polling stations.
*it = is
“you know that there are a few people out there who don’t read signs and don’t put stuff in the right place.”
Indeed. Well, at least this 11-year-old could apparently figure out how to cast a valid vote with a piece of paper, which puts her ahead of a lot of Floridians…
Is that her in the picture?
I don’t think the 11-year-old girl is together enough to rig an election. At least they didn’t make a huge deal out of the one vote and recount everything.
In America there’d be lawsuits and hearings and recounts and in the end the election would probably be invalidated because of one mistaken vote. Go USA…not.
You’re not from Chicago, are you?
if that’s her in the picture she is NOT tall for her age
Read the article: “The 11-year-old elementary school girl, who visited a poll station in Osaka’s Nishi-Yodogawa Ward with her father”
Reading comprehension – it’s important.