Attracting the Eighteens

Enthusiasm on lowering voting age covers Japan. Led by campaign strategists, every party considers how to attract new young voters. National government expects higher rate in turnouts, making efforts for “eligible voters education” and some reviews in election system. While those attempts are not supposed to be sufficient for enhancing democracy, Japanese politics is focused on voting age, not willing to lower the age of adult.

It was Coming of Age Day on Monday. Every local office held ceremony for new adults, in which girls decorated themselves with rental kimono and boys appeared with smoking cigarette as a symbol of the aged. Some local government prepared ballot box for mock voting to notify the young agers that they came to an age of eligible voters. It is not clear how many decided to go to vote in coming election of House of Councillors this summer.

A person with age of twenty or more is legally recognized as an adult in Japan. However, Voting age will be lowered from twenty to eighteen this year. Basic reason was to hear more young voices for referendum on constitutional amendment. If the referendum covers the eighteens and older, why not ordinary election. That was why lower voters age was introduced.

But, age of adult is still twenty. The conservatives in Liberal Democratic Party were negative to render broad rights to the teens. So, people younger than age of twenty cannot smoke, drink beer or rend money by themselves. To allow them those activities, a great amount of legal amendment will be required. Even though they have voting right, eighteen and nineteen agers are half adult.

Voting system is not perfect, anyway. Asahi Shimbun revealed that some people with age of twenty had been dropped from the list of eligible voters. A voter has to live one place for three months at least to cast ballot at the region. A person who was listed being age of twenty and later moved less than three months before the election was not eligible, because he/she did not have record of three-month residence. With introduction of younger voting age, the lawmakers are going to introduce new law to allow all voters to vote based on previous address.

The lawmakers are also going to submit bills for voters to be able to vote in shopping centers or train stations. Though voters have been casting ballots only in public offices, they will be able to participate in the election during shopping with families or in their way to office. However, fewer turnouts should be attributed to apathetic sentiment of people against complicated struggle in politics. To tackle the issues closely connected to ordinary life is needed to attract voters.