Bill to Redraw Lower House Electoral Map Submitted to Diet

Tokyo, Oct. 25 (Jiji Press)--The Japanese government submitted to the House of Representatives on Tuesday a bill that would reduce vote-value disparities by redrawing single-seat constituency boundaries for the lower chamber of the Diet, the country's parliament.

The bill to revise the public offices election law is expected to be enacted during the current parliamentary session running until December, removing 10 seats and adding 10 seats in 15 of the country's 47 prefectures.

After enactment, the revised law will take effect a month after promulgation. The new electoral map will be applied to Lower House elections after the implementation.

The planned redistribution will take away one seat each from 10 prefectures--Miyagi, Fukushima, Niigata, Shiga, Wakayama, Okayama, Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Ehime and Nagasaki--while five seats will be added to Tokyo, two to Kanagawa Prefecture and one each to Saitama, Chiba and Aichi prefectures.

The so-called Adams method, which better reflects population ratios, was used for the first time for the rezoning.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]