Voting for unified local elections will be held this month. At a business office in Nara Prefecture where people with intellectual disabilities attend, we are working to explain to users who have run for office and escort them to polling places to link them to voting.

Know your candidates, take an interest in elections

About 10 people in their teens to 50s with intellectual disabilities attend Ayumi-no-ie, a long-term care facility in Ikaruga Town, Nara Prefecture. There are various degrees of disability, such as those who have difficulty expressing their intentions in words.

About five years ago, when board member Kazuaki Morikawa started working at the facility, he learned that there were people who had never voted or were unfamiliar with the election system.

So we decided to show people a picture of all the candidates to get people interested in the election so they could know who ran for office.

Kazuaki Morikawa said, "I think everyone has a natural right to vote in elections, and I thought that if we could create an environment, we would always be able to vote even if we had a disability."

Currently, at the time of elections, we use election posters and election bulletins to make a paper that summarizes the candidates' headshots.

Show the paper to people who come to your office and ask them to think about which candidate to choose.

Respect the will of the person and notify parents

Whether or not to go to the election is left to the will of the person, and we distribute notices to parents and others to ask for their cooperation.

About half of the users are now going to vote.

At the facility, when Election Day approaches, students practice pointing their fingers at the candidates on a form of candidate summary and writing the name of the candidate of their choice.

On voting day, staff will accompany you from the facility to the polling place and wait outside the polling place until it is over.

Users who enter polling places vote with a form with a photo of the candidate in their hands, which they also used in practice, or use the "proxy voting" system in which the name of the candidate is asked to write the name of the person to be voted on by the election committee if it is difficult to write the name of the candidate.

The vote I thought was impossible

Machiko Mizuta said that her son, Yukitaka, who has been attending the office for more than 20 years, had long given up on voting in elections, and that "I didn't even think about going to the election, and when the numbered election ticket arrived, I just threw it away."

However, when the efforts to support elections began, they first voted out of interest at their offices, and have been voting ever since.

Mizuta said, "I really wanted them to go to the elections, and it was frustrating that I couldn't go, but as a parent, I am very happy to be able to vote through this kind of initiative."

Kazuaki Morikawa of the office says, "It is helpful because we can have a meeting with the election management committee in advance to understand the situation of people going to vote before responding.

The business site plans to make similar efforts for voting in the unified local elections.