Recommendation of Adams System

The advisory commission for election system reform in the House of Representatives summarized a draft for introducing new system with reduction of 10 seats out of 375. If the draft is applied, inequality on value of one vote will be contained within twice, a benchmark which Supreme Court required the House in 2011. However, incompetent lawmakers still argue whether the reform plan should be applied to their precincts.

The commission was established in September 2014, when the discussion over election reform was gridlocked by struggle over partisan interests. Although the parties had agreed on the necessity of reform to guarantee equality under law and to restore credibility on the Diet, they kept on insisting on their preferable reform some others could not accept. So, they gave up drawing conclusion and left the argument to the commission on the condition that all parties would follow the recommendation.

The draft of the commission was to draw the line of electoral districts in accordance with an old system in United States, called Adams System. It is said that John Quincy Adams, the sixth U.S. President, upheld a system, in which distribution of voters were determined by calculation. If it is applied to Japanese local government system, the seats of each prefecture will be quotient of the number of eligible voters divided by another certain number. When there is a prefecture with 400,000 of population and the variable is 200,000, two seats are distributed to the prefecture. The remainder will be counted as 1 seat.

Introducing Adams System, the commission recommended reducing 1 seat in each of 13 prefectures and increasing 7 seats in 4 prefectures including 3 additional seats in Tokyo. It also required reducing 4 seats in proportional representation. The House of Representatives will be constructed by 289 seats from electoral districts and 176 seats from proportional representation, if the draft is applied. The greatest value of one vote will be contained within 1.621 times greater than the smallest one.

With the greatest number of lawmakers, Liberal Democratic Party will have the greatest problem in introducing new election system. Although the leaders are willing to discuss the draft, lawmakers in the diminishing districts are protesting to it. Japan Communist Party is fundamentally opposing to decreasing any one seat. Other parties also referred to insufficiency of the draft. It is unclear that the fundamental basis of discussion, following any opinion the commission would conclude, will be implemented. This is what Japanese democracy is all about: interest of lawmakers overtakes interest of people.