Residents of Karatsu City struggle to vote when two candidates have exactly the same name
Master Blaster
Jan 29, 2017
This weekend the citizens of Karatsu City in Saga Prefecture are heading to the polls to choose their city council for the next term. However, this time they are faced with a unique dilemma of how to vote for either Shigeru Aoki or Shigeru Aoki.
The incumbent, 56-year-old Shigeru Aoki, is hoping to hold onto his seat for a fifth consecutive term, but will have his work cut out for him against 43-year-old challenger, Shigeru Aoki. It has been a tricky campaign so far for each man as they have exactly the same name right down to the kanji ( 青木茂 ).
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The Ministry of Internal Affairs which oversees the voting process is asking all voters to write something to distinguish the candidates from each other on the ballot; preferably by writing down their age or whether they are the incumbent or challenger. Failing that, any objective description will be allowed.
Some examples of preferred ballots are:
“Aoki Shigeru, 56”
“Aoki Shigeru, incumbent”
Other possibly acceptable ballots would be:
“Aoki Shigeru, with glasses”
“Aoki Shigeru who graduated from Fukuoka University”
However, any subjective descriptions of a voter’s desired Shigeru Aoki would be deemed unacceptable by vote counters and rejected, examples of such include:
“Aoki Shigeru, the smart one”
“Aoki Shigeru, the one who looks like he could lose a little weight”
“Aoki Shigeru, the guy who complimented my hairstyle last week”
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This all hearkens back to the run-off between John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt and John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt that is still discussed by political scholars on long road trips to this day. Many a song was written about that legendary election.
http://en.rocketnews24.com/2017/01/29/residents-of-karatsu-city-struggle-to-vote-when-two-candidates-have-exactly-the-same-name/
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