Yomiuri: DPJ plans to OK use of Net in campaigns
The Democratic Party of Japan plans to lift a ban on the use of the Internet and visits to individual houses for election campaigns in a drastic liberalization of election-related activities, it has been learned. According to sources, the DPJ plans to submit a bill to the ordinary Diet session that will convene this month for revising the Public Offices Election Law to enable the use of the Internet, aiming to implement it for this summer's House of Councillors election. The DPJ plans to make lifting the ban on home visits a campaign promise in the upcoming election, and hopes to revise the law in autumn or after, the sources said....According to the sources, the DPJ is seeking a full lifting of the ban on the use of the Internet, allowing candidates not only to update their Web sites, but also to use e-mail as a campaign tool...The Liberal Democratic Party is skeptical of the idea to allow the use of e-mail because it would be easy for other people to pose as candidates by using their names. The DPJ plans to consider measures to prevent such online acts or attacks on other candidates...Meanwhile, visits to individual houses have been prohibited since the law establishing universal suffrage was enacted in 1925, except for a brief postwar period. Therefore, if the ban is lifted, it could drastically change in how election campaigns are conducted. However, because the DPJ believes it will take time to hash out such a plan between the ruling and opposition parties, it plans to first realize the liberalization of the use of the Internet...more...