Sunday, December 16, 2012

(UPDATED) Japanese Election: 99% of Polling Stations in Gunma Prefecture Will Close As Early As 5PM Instead of 8PM, to Save Money


(UPDATE) See my latest post for election results.

(UPDATE) It turns out that Tottori Prefecture in Chugoku Region closed the polling stations as early as 4PM (Yomiuri Shinbun). The reasons? To alleviate the undue burden on the witnesses at the polling stations (i.e. save money) and start counting sooner (i.e. save money).

ALL polling stations in Fukushima Prefecture close at 6PM, according to Sankei Shinbun. 85% of polling stations in Akita, 64% in Iwate, 57% in Miyagi will also close early. The reasons? To save energy (yes, we have to fight global warming) and to be safe, as winter is cold and dark.

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Huh?

According to Yomiuri Shinbun's December 10, 2012 article, more than 99% of 953 polling stations in Gunma Prefecture will close early, instead of being open until 8PM like everywhere else in Japan.

Yomiuri says the municipalities in Gunma have always been like that, closing the stations earlier so that they could start counting the votes right at 8PM and announce the result first in the nation.

From the article, it is only one municipality (Minakami) that will keep the polling stations open until 8PM. 17 municipalities will close at 5PM, 11 will close at 6PM, 23 will close at 7PM.

There seem to be two reasons:

  • Why waste money keeping the stations open? We can close early and start counting early, so everyone can go home early.

  • The sun sets early and it gets dark early in the winter, so it's dangerous on the streets.


Uh... it is as if they were still in pre-Meiji era with no electricity...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unbelievable!

Anonymous said...

Well this let's you know exactly how unimportant democracy is to the Japanese public or their political overlords. They just need a enough people to vote so it looks like they actually had a choice in candidates but in reality big business and the top 1% chose the winners long before the contest was even started. Voting is only used to give the public the illusion that they decide their own destiny so it doesn't matter if a few of them are shut out of the process.

Anonymous said...

Welcome to the 21st Century.

Anonymous said...

Slaves thats all people are and this shit has been going on for thousands of years, luckily people are waking up to a lot of bullshit now and realise the sociopaths that run the world are numbered , Japan being very much one of those countries that is psycopathic but the people are only very slowly waking up and certainly not on masse

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Anonymous said...

Japan just voted for their Seppuku. The Japanese are obviously brain dead already, so it's just a minor step.
LDP is king of the hill now and they are for sure going to misuse their power ( as they always did before ).
Within 5 years, all NPP will be reopened. They have full controle over mass media, and the Diet, so it's a piece of cake for them.
We only have to wait for the next big quake to confirm that Japan is officially over.

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