How One Ballot Marked “Dumpling Shop” Could Decide a Mayor—and the Risk of Interpreting Voter Intent Too Generously

When a Single Vote Becomes Very Heavy Indeed

Elections are the foundation of democracy.

That is why every vote matters.

Still, I never imagined that adults would have to seriously debate the meaning of a ballot marked “dumpling shop.”

In a mayoral election in Kamisu, Ibaraki Prefecture, the two candidates received exactly the same number of votes.

Under Japanese law, a tie like this is ultimately decided by drawing lots.

That alone would have made the election highly unusual.

But a closer examination of the ballots uncovered votes bearing descriptions such as “the manju shop” and “Mr. Dango”—manju and dango are both traditional Japanese sweets. One candidate had a relative who runs a traditional Japanese confectionery company. The city election board counted these as votes for that candidate, but the prefectural election board ruled them invalid, saying the descriptions were not widely recognized as nicknames for the candidate.

With the city and prefectural authorities reaching different conclusions, the dispute ended up in court.

And so, on the front line of democracy, officials found themselves earnestly debating a remarkable question:

Who exactly is “Mr. Dango”?

Just Write the Candidate’s Name

My first reaction to the story had nothing to do with political systems or legal doctrine.

Write the name.

There were only two candidates. Their names were displayed at the polling station.

Why, then, would anyone write “Mr. Dango”?

An election is not an improv comedy contest. Nor is it a place to challenge election officials with a riddle: “Surely you can tell who I meant from this clue.”

Worse still, this election was tied. A ballot that ordinarily would have made no difference suddenly became the vote that could determine the mayor.

The More Intent We Try to Preserve, the More Ambiguity We Create

I can also understand why election officials examined the ballots so carefully.

In Japanese elections, even an imperfectly written ballot may be counted if the voter’s intended candidate is clear. In a democracy, it makes sense to preserve the will of the voter whenever possible.

But that creates a dilemma.

The harder we try to honor voter intent, the more interpretation we need to decide whom a ballot was meant for.

Who is “Mr. Dango”?

Who is “the manju shop”?

How widely must a nickname be known before it counts?

Paradoxically, the more carefully we try to administer the rules, the more room we create for human judgment.

With Two Candidates, Why Not Just Check a Box?

This raises a rather obvious question.

If there are only two candidates, why ask voters to write a name at all? Why not simply have them check a box next to one of the two?

As a rule, Japanese voters write the candidate’s name by hand. That creates problems involving misspellings, abbreviations, and nicknames.

With a checkbox next to each candidate, the philosophical problem of identifying “Mr. Dango” would never arise.

It is a multiple-choice question presented as a free-text field.

From a software professional’s perspective, that is a frightening user interface.

Imagine asking, “Do you prefer A or B?” in a survey, then providing one enormous text box for the answer.

Of course someone will type something unexpected.

Democracy Cannot Ban Its Users

Any software system that lets people enter whatever they want will eventually receive data that makes its developers ask, “Why would anyone enter this?”

That is why we provide choices, define input formats, and add validation. We sacrifice a little freedom to eliminate ambiguity.

Elections deal with the will of the people, so the tradeoff is not nearly so simple.

We want to save every possible vote. But doing so requires human interpretation.

Democracy is a remarkably troublesome system.

Before turning this into a grand debate about institutional design, however, I want to make one simple point about this particular election.

There were two candidates.

Their names were displayed.

Pencils were provided.

And yet the system still had to account for someone writing “Mr. Dango.”

Users do not read the manual.

And in a democracy, you cannot ban them.