The Liberal Democratic Party, Nippon Ishin no Kai and the Democratic Party for the People met officials in the Diet on Wednesday to speed up work on a bill cutting 31 proportional representation seats and merging the Chugoku and Shikoku proportional blocs. The three parties aim to settle the bill's contents by next week and submit it jointly in the current Diet session, Kyodo News reported.
The cut follows a compromise inside the ruling camp. The LDP had submitted a bill cutting 45 proportional seats during the previous extraordinary Diet session, but opposition resistance left it under continued deliberation. The LDP then proposed a 31-seat cut based on population-decline projections, and agreed the figure with Nippon Ishin and the DPFP at the end of October.
Proportional seats are allocated from party lists rather than single-member districts, so the cut and the bloc merger reduce the routes by which sparsely populated areas send members to the House of Representatives. Merging Chugoku and Shikoku combines two of the 11 regional blocs that return proportional members.
What the agreement covers
The agreement also sets out changes to how proportional seats are won and filled. They include:
- Allowing a single nationwide list for proportional candidates
- Switching the seat allocation formula to a modified Sainte-Lague method, which makes it easier for small and medium parties to win seats
- Raising the minimum share of the vote needed for a candidate to return to the Diet through the proportional list from one-tenth to one-sixth of all valid votes
- Leaving a seat vacant when a party does not have enough proportional winners to fill its allocation