Unified Local Elections, April-November 2011

Earthquake, March 2011  

On 11 March 2011, a Richter Scale-9.0 earthquake occurred in the Pacific Ocean, 72 km east of the Oshika Peninsula. The earthquake caused a series of large tsunamis that devastated many coastal areas, notably in the Tohoku region. The tsunami further resulted in a major nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, damaging backup generators and leading to partial meltdowns of the fuel rods. On 11 March 2011 the Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, declared a state of nuclear power emergency around the Fukushima No 1 plant. Residents within a 4km radius were told to evacuate, and an estimated 3,000 residents moved out (Deutsche Welle 2011; McCurry 2011a). It is estimated that around 18,500 people were killed in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami. Four years after the disaster, some 230,000 people were still displaced, many due to the continuation of the evacuation zone around the Fukushima plant.  

Impact on the electoral process   

The unified elections took place on 10 and 24 April 2011. However, elections in certain municipalities hard-hit by the earthquake and tsunami would be postponed to August, September and November 2011. These included the Sendai city council election (postponed to 28 August); Iwate prefectural governor election and council member election (11 September); the Miyagi prefectural assembly and parliamentary elections (13 November); and the Fukushima prefectural assembly election (20 November).  

Voter registration before the election was made difficult by population displacement. Voter regristration in Japan is decentralized and automatic, meaning that polling officials do not need to assess individual voters’ eligibility. However, this is based on other civic registation systems (family and residence) that were disrupted by the disaster. Coastal municipalities therefore improvised voter registration, including my mail. Having each lost manpower, this required the involvement and coordination of many local governments (Kawamura 2012). 

Political information such as information on candidates was not widely available for voters from the disaster areas. Again, municipalities improvised new systems such as mailing paper information to voters. Some put election information on their websites, however connectivity in the temporary housing for displaced persons was poor. Evacuees (some of whom were elderly and with limited mobility) were encouraged to vote early; some municipalities set up mobile early voting stations for temporary housing complexes or set up multiple early voting stations. In Fukushima Prefecture, town hall functions were relocated 200km away to Kazo City, Saitama Prefecture. This included vote counting, making this the first ever vote counting to take place outside of a prefecture (Kawamura 2012).  

Such changes were possible within the existing legal framework, which allows central government (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications) to issue instructions on election management in addition to the normally decentralized operations; the national government retains the right to interpret all electoral laws and regulations. The disaster spurred some discussion about reform, including the potential benefits of e-voting (Kawamura 2012). 

On election day, some displaced voters had not replaced their residency cards—in the expectation of returning home—and were thus unable to vote (Kawamura 2012). The reduction in polling stations created a spike in the number of absentee ballots; the authorities extended the official campaign period by several days to allow displaced residents to make their decision and submit their ballot papers (McCurry 2011b).

According to one study, the disaster resulted in a six per cent increase in participation in political groups in heavily affected regions and a 2.5 per cent increase in turnout. Individuals stimulated to vote by the disaster and response conditions are thought to have been those with large social networks (Jenkins 2019).