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Malapportionment and the 2012 House of Representatives Election

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Japan Decides 2012

Abstract

Japan is notorious for its malapportioned election districts. Japan’s Supreme Court measures this inequality by comparing the districts with the largest and smallest populations. For the 2012 election, the largest district, based on census estimates, was the Chiba 4th District with 494,141 registered voters and the smallest district was the Kochi 3rd District with 207,688 voters. This comparison can be expressed as a ratio of disparity; 1:2.38, meaning that for every voter in the Kochi 3rd District there was nearly 2.4 voters in the Chiba 4th District.

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© 2013 Ray Christensen

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Christensen, R. (2013). Malapportionment and the 2012 House of Representatives Election. In: Pekkanen, R., Reed, S.R., Scheiner, E. (eds) Japan Decides 2012. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137346124_11

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