ABSTRACT
Japan has an excellent system of handling and counting ballots that is worthy of emulation in other countries. Specifically, all of the ballots are collected at the municipal level and verified before any counting of ballots begins. The counting then occurs in public. This system minimizes the possibility of election night fraud and eliminates incentives to politicize the authorization of provisional or absentee ballots that are counted after the election night totals are known. An analysis of data patterns in election results also shows a curious tendency towards some election night corruption in both US and Canadian elections with an absence of such tendencies in Japanese elections.
