Japan’s LDP Seeks to Add 6 Seats to Upper House

June 15, 2018

Tokyo- Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party submitted a bill Thursday to increase the number of seats in the House of Councillors by six from 242 at present.

The LDP aims to put the change in place beginning with an Upper House election scheduled for summer next year.

The bill seeks to raise the number of seats for the Saitama prefectural electoral district, which has the largest number of voters per seat, to eight from six to keep the maximum vote-value gap between districts below three times.

The bill also calls for creating four new proportional representation seats to help candidates who have been denied a chance to run in Upper House elections due to an electoral reform in 2016.

Under the 2016 reform, two pairs of sparsely populated neighboring prefectural electoral districts in western Japan--Tottori and Shimane, and Tokushima and Kochi--were integrated into single constituencies.

Opposition parties criticized the proposed addition of proportional representation seats for only benefiting the LDP, which has strong support bases in rural areas.

The LDP submitted the bill after it failed to narrow gaps with opposition parties. Jiji Press