Three employees from Ota Ward, Tokyo, have been sent to prosecutors for allegedly tampering with the results of the recent Senate elections, with indications that similar misconduct may have occurred in past elections.
On July 2, Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department sent three male officials from Ota Ward to prosecutors on suspicion of violating the Public Offices Election Act by tampering with the results of the Senate elections held on July 20, 2025. The officials, aged between 20 and 50, reportedly admitted to the charges against them. Investigators clarified that there was no impact on the actual vote counts or the outcomes of the elections, despite the tampering of data.
These officials were involved in the ballot counting process for last year's Senate elections and are suspected of enhancing the number of blank votes to misreport the total voter turnout. Record-keeping errors had initially indicated an implausibly high number of voters compared to the actual count. To reconcile this discrepancy, the accused officials are alleged to have inflated the reported figures by accounting for fictitious blank votes — totaling 2,500 for the electoral district and 2,700 for the proportional representation district. At the time, the actual number of registered voters stood at 624,846.
In addition to the initial three officials, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police on the same day sent another official in their thirties to prosecutors for tampering allegations connected to the upcoming gubernatorial election in 2024. Past incidents of vote count manipulation in previous Senate elections were also coming to light as the Ota Ward’s election management office had reported discrepancies in overall voter counts shortly after the incident. A third-party committee was established in October 2025 to ensure the proper conduct of future elections, emphasizing the need for accurate and fair election processes to restore public trust in the election system.
