Adams Method

A consultative committee of the Chairman of the House of Representatives on election system resumed its discussion after unexpected intervention made by dissolution of the House last November. New idea brought on the table was to increase and reduce of nine seats to mitigate the value gap of one vote. The method proposed was too trivial to generate full understanding of legislators. The discussion over equality of voting value is going to be further complicated.

The Supreme Court had decided that the two times or greater value for one least valued vote should be unconstitutional. That gap at the last election of the House of Representatives was 2.13 between the Tokyo 1^st district and the Miyagi 5^th. Lawyers strongly upholding voters’ equality indicted the House asserting the election as invalid.

New idea was to reduce one seat from each of nine prefectures, which had the fewest voters for one seat, and redistribute those seats to six prefectures, which had the greatest population for one seat. Targeted prefectures were Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Mie, Shiga, Nara, Kumamoto, Kagoshima and Okinawa. Saitama, Chiba Shizuoka or Aichi alternatively gets one additional seat each, while Kanagawa gets two and Tokyo receives three.

The calculation introduced for the idea was what was called Adams Method, which was named after 6^th President of United States, John Quincy Adams, who invented the method. With that method, the committee divided eligible voters of each prefecture by 470,259. Each remainder of the calculation would be recognized as one seat. 470,259 was drawn for making all seats as many as 295, the quorum of the House.

One problem of Adams Method is that it is close to current system of “one seat grant” for all the prefectures, which was realized as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. One seat grant principle was temporarily introduced for supporting rural prefectures to promote balanced development, the idea which already became obsolete. Some members of the committee opposed the system, regarding irrelevancy to the Supreme Court’s demand.

Regulating the value of one vote is not only issue discussed by the committee. Cutting off the quorum and fundamental reform of representation are also agenda of the House. The committee still does not have any concrete idea on those issues, which will take a long time for an agreement. Although the committee will continue its discussion for final report in May, it is still unclear whether all parties agree with one conclusion on not only voting equality, but also quorum reduction and fundamental reform in representing system.