No.67 Concerning the revision of the constituency of the House of Representatives election

On April 19, 2017, the Cabinet Office's ``House of Representatives Electoral District Delimitation Council'' so-called ``District Allocation Commission'' submitted a recommendation to Prime Minister Abe for a revised single-single electoral district. On April 16th, the Cabinet approved a bill to revise the Public Offices Election Law.
Regarding single-seat constituencies, lawsuits have been filed over single-vote differences in each election, and the Supreme Court has ruled them unconstitutional three times. The government plans to carry out a provisional review to reduce the gap to less than double over the five years until the next review, taking into account future population trends.
This ward division review will target a total of 19 prefectures, with six prefectures each having one single-seat district reduced, and 13 prefectures changing their ward division lines. The number of constituencies to be revised will be 97, and this is the largest revision since the single-seat constituency system was introduced in the House of Representatives in 1994.
As a result of this review, the difference between the 22nd ward of Tokyo (554,880 people), which has the highest population, and the 1st ward of Tottori (277,569 people), which has the lowest population, is expected to increase by 1.999 times, according to population estimates for 2020.
Correcting the disparity by one vote is naturally necessary, and I do not object to that. However, in reviewing the size to less than double, it is unacceptable to suddenly divide the city, which is a basic local government.
The entire city area of ​​Inagi City belonged to Tokyo's 22 wards (Mitaka, Chofu, Komae, Inagi), but with this recommendation, the areas of Sakahama, Hirao, Nagamine, and Wakabadai will be included in Tokyo's 21 wards (Tachikawa, Hino, etc.) The remaining areas remain in Tokyo's 22 wards (see image).
Inagi City has been receiving hearings from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications since the end of last year, and each time we have made strong requests not to split the city, but unfortunately they have not listened. Although municipalities do not have the authority to be involved in determining the division of wards, there was a risk that if they remained idle, the division would remain unchanged as originally proposed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, so on March 21, 2017, a joint effort was made with Tama City to ``City in the division of wards''. A statement calling for reconsideration of the division of areas was released. On April 20, 2017, the NHK Metropolitan Area Network covered this issue, so I think many people watched it on TV.
The following is a summary of the comments I made on April 19, 2017 in response to the recommendations.
Mayor Inagi's statement
(1) We have requested that a zoning revision plan be prepared in accordance with the policy for drafting a zoning revision plan, which states that the ``principle is not to divide municipal areas,'' as established by the House of Representatives Election Zoning Council. It is truly regrettable that this was not accepted.
(2) As a municipality that is home to a new town that has been promoted as a national policy, the city has strived to foster a sense of community unity, and it is recommended that the zoning plan that divides such a small city would be detrimental to that goal. I truly regret what happened.
(3) As this ward division revision is considered to be a provisional measure based on the results of the 2015 census, the city will I would like to call for a fundamental re-examination to avoid division.

We will tell about trend of electoral district revision by city public relations in future.