新型コロナ禍と選挙管理

第３次全国市区町村選挙管理委員会事務局調査より

抄録

　This paper examines how municipal election administration commissions responded to COVID-19 for the 2021 general election for the House of Representatives. In order to control the spread of the infection of COVID-19, the administration was urged to change its traditional practices, in particular, to avoid face-to-face contact. However, this was not easy to do when voting, and measures were mainly taken in the polling places. Although it is natural to assume that the measures taken against COVID-19 at polling places are uniform throughout the country, the actual measures taken varied considerably among election administration commissions. By examining the characteristics of Japan's electoral management bodies, this paper considers four reasons for the variation: constraints on available resources, political demands through the election administration commissions, cross-referencing at the prefectural level, and the governor's strategies. Based on the third National Municipal Election Commission Secretariat Survey conducted in January-February 2022, our analysis found that resource constraints were significantly effective in explaining the variation, and the governor's strategy was effective to some extent. Concerning cross-referencing, we can observe the convergence at the prefectural level in some measures, but the reasons for this have not yet been elucidated.