Kanazawa Mayor Candidate Challenges Twitter-Banning Japan’s Election System
On November 28th at Kanazawa city, Ishikawa prefecture, Japan there was a mayor election. The two leading candidates, incumbent Tamotsu Yamade [J], 79, and Yukiyoshi Yamano [J], 48, competed closely, gained 56,840 and 58,204 votes respectively. Only 1,364 difference.
The things causing a fuss is, the young winner Yamano’s team reportedly had been using Twitter during the campaign period, which violates the Japan’s public office electian law which bans all “documents and drawings” distribution are prohibited.
According to Mainichi, not Yamano himself did not update his Twitter but his secretary and the chief of internet strategy, who runs IT company, made many tweets with attaching candidate’s photo like addressing.
The election committee was said to caution Yamano’s office more than 3 times, and also informed Ishikawa prefecture police, but the police did not make caution. A topsider of the police commented that it was difficult to prosecute as lifting of the Internet ban is in recent trend.
The chief of internet strategy said that he understood that it was illegal, but thinks okay unless the result of the election gets revoked.
via Mainichi
See Also:
Japan’s Internet-Banned Election Probed By Voice Over Twitter
