The General Election Law (普通選挙法, Futsū Senkyo Hō) was a law passed in Taishō period Japan, extending suffrage to all males aged 25 and over.[1] It was proposed by the Kenseitō political party and it was passed by the Diet of Japan on 5 May 1925.
The law increased the electorate from 3,341,000 to 12,534,360.[1]
YouTube Encyclopedic
-
1/3Views:1 140 4733 052 308272 853
-
7 Illegal Things To Do In A British Election
-
Why the UK Election Results are the Worst in History.
-
Election Basics: Crash Course Government and Politics #36
Transcription
We are six weeks away from the UK General Election, which means we are in purdah. Unless it's absolutely critical, the folks in charge, national or local, aren't allowed to announce any new policies, sign any big new contracts, or do anything official that could be seen as trying to use their power to unduly influence the election. Not that most of them will: Parliament has just been dissolved, so they can all go off and campaign. On that note... The rules are complicated and depend on the size of the area you're campaigning in, but from now until election day, each individual candidate can spend no more than about £15,000 on all their campaigning. That's not just an advertising budget: that's on everything. Every penny has to be counted, tracked and invoiced, and if you go over, you can be disqualified even after the election. And all the scams and tricky you're currently thinking of to get around that? The law covers most of them with a catch-all clause saying you must make an "honest assessment". The political parties also have a limit on their national campaigning budget, which is about twenty million pounds over the whole country. Sounds like a lot, but as a comparison: the last US election cost six billion dollars. But keeping to that isn't as difficult as you might think, because... The UK has never allowed political adverts on television. The parties are given a small amount of free airtime on major channels, but pretty much everyone switches off as soon as they hear the phrase "Now, a Party Election Broadcast by..." This year, though, the parties have realised that they can put attack ads on the internet instead, and then use their limited budget to target those ads only at people who live in marginal constituencies -- swing states, for the Americans out there. In you live in one of those, you might even have seen one of those ads before this video. So, okay, the parties can't advertise on TV, but surely they've got the pundits on the news arguing for them, right? TV news must be -- well, actually fair and balanced. By law. Generally, the BBC gets an equal amount of complaints from all sides, and then they reckon they've done their job about right. Newspapers have no restriction like that, though, and the tabloids have been quite happy to use that influence in the past. I swear that's what it's called. Here's how the scam works: go into a retirement home, and by confidence, collusion, or coercion, get access to either the residents' postal votes, or get nominated as their proxy voter, so you can vote on their behalf. Amazingly, this has only been illegal since 2006. How do you spoil a result? Well, postal votes are sometimes opened for verification days before the polls have closed. There's no reason why not, it won't change the result as long as they're still kept secret. And no-one does anything ridiculous like, oh I don't know, tweet what they've seen. Well done there, actual member of Parliament. She deleted it quickly, admitted it, and was given an official police caution. And finally: Everyone who's stuck posters up, or put some temporary sign up in their garden: they have to make sure they're taken down within two weeks. If it's anything like last time, we may not even have a government in there by then, but at least those of us who live away from Westminster won't be constantly reminded of it.
Background
Meiji period Japan was dominated by the Meiji oligarchy, who viewed popular democracy and party politics with suspicion. However, after the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution, limited suffrage was extended to male property holders, aged over 25 years, who paid more than 15 Yen in annual taxes for elections to the lower house starting in 1890. The number of voters who qualified under this restriction was around 450,000 (roughly 1 percent of the population). Over the next three decades, the number grew to around 3,000,000. Many executive and legislative positions in the Japanese government were appointive, rather than elected. Although seats in local, prefecture and the national (lower) assemblies were elected, the House of Peers was composed of both appointed and hereditary members, and prefectural governors were appointed by the central government and answerable only to the Home Ministry (Japan). City mayors were appointed by the prefectural governor, albeit from a list of names supplied by the city elected assembly.
Universal Suffrage Movement
Almost from the start of elections in Japan, popular movements arose to eliminate the tax-paying requirement, which effectively disenfranchised a large segment of the adult male population. In 1897, the Universal Suffrage League (普通選挙期成同盟会, Futsu Senkyo Kisei Dōmeikai) was created to raise public awareness through discussion groups and periodicals. Diet members, mostly from liberal faction within the Diet, supported by the Liberal Party of Japan (Jiyuto) and its offshoots, presented bills to the Diet in 1902, 1903, 1908, 1909 and 1910. The movement finally appeared to succeed in March 1911, when its Universal Suffrage Bill was passed by the lower house, only to be summarily rejected by the House of Peers.
Increased government hostility towards radical groups broadened in the 1910s, with the implementation of the Peace Preservation Laws and increased censorship and surveillance of suspected radical groups associated with leftist or labor movements. However, the movement for universal suffrage resurfaced in 1918–1919 with demonstrations held by student and labor associations and a sudden upsurge in interest by newspapers and popular journals. The opposition political parties, the Kenseikai and Rikken Kokumintō, jumped on the bandwagon, whereas the governmental Rikken Seiyūkai still opposed.
The liberal parties favored an increase in the popular franchise to keep up with the world trend towards democracy and to provide a safety valve for both urban and rural discontent. The more conservative parties, fearing that the increased voter base would favor their liberal opponents, resisted these proposals.
In 1924, a Kenseikai alliance with the Seiyukai scored a victory over the non-party government of Kiyoura Keigo. Kenseikai leader Katō Takaaki became Prime Minister of Japan, and the Seiyukai was forced to accept the Kenseikai proposal on extending universal male suffrage to all male citizens over the age of 25 as the price for the coalition. The bill was passed in 1925, and came into effect for the 20 February 1928 elections.
Criticisms
The General Election Law was passed only after the Peace Preservation Law was passed. Although more democracy was given, liberty (in terms of freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and freedom of speech) was limited at the same time.
Women still did not have the right to vote.
See also
References
This page was last edited on 27 November 2022, at 14:46