Local governments across the nation have their hands full ahead of Sunday's House of Representatives election, with various measures being prepared to mitigate the spread of coronavirus.
On Friday, city officials in Mitaka, Tokyo, were lugging desks and chairs into a sports center that will be used as a ballot-counting station.
Disinfectant will be placed at the entrance on Sunday and a ventilation system will be used. "I hope vote counting will be carried out as smoothly as possible while balancing coronavirus measures," a city official said.
As some elementary and junior high schools will be used as polling stations, many local governments will have to wait until Saturday to set up the facilities.
In Ota, Gunma Prefecture, city officials have been busy sharpening about 103,000 polling station pencils that bear the message, "Sayonara coronavirus -- Moving toward a new future."
It will be the second election in the city since the outbreak of the pandemic. In the mayoral election in April, city officials disinfected each pencil after it was used at polling stations, but there were concerns that it was preventing officials from doing other election-related work. This time, the city has decided to let voters take the pencils home.
The Nagano city government is posting information on the city's website about crowding levels at early-voting locations.
Every hour, a polling station official logs information on the number of people at the station via their smartphones. The website indicates whether the polling station is very crowded, somewhat crowded or not crowded at all.
The system was introduced for a House of Councillors by-election in April and was said to be effective as visits were spread across the time slots.
Since March last year, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry has repeatedly asked local governments to inform voters of crowding levels at early-voting locations and other facilities.
However, only 33.6%, or 78 of 232 municipalities, implemented such measures in the elections held from April 1 to July 12 last year.
The Sapporo city government will have 2,800 officials counting ballots on Sunday, 1,200 fewer than in the previous lower house election in 2017.
The city purchased an additional 60 automatic ballot-counting machines that it used in the lower house by-election in the Hokkaido No.2 constituency in April. According to the city, this enabled officials to complete vote counting about 90 minutes earlier than scheduled.
Employees of Musashi Co., a Tokyo-based maker of election system equipment, have been visiting local governments nationwide to set up and check the operation of the machines to be used in ballot-counting. "We will continue our work until the last minute," a company spokesperson said.
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