Record 10.9 mil. cast early votes in Sunday`s election

TOKYO, Aug. 29 Kyodo -
Some 10.94 million voters had cast early ballots by Friday for Sunday's general
election, the highest figure for any of the lower or upper house elections
since the current early voting system began for national elections in 2004, the
internal affairs ministry announced Saturday.
The 10,944,845 tally accounts for 10.49 percent of the 104,344,170 eligible
voters during a 10-day period starting Aug. 19, the day after the general
election campaign officially commenced, through Friday, according to the tally
by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
The number of early voters in single-seat constituencies throughout Japan is
expected to surpass 12 million, since the early voting continued through
Saturday.
The large number of early voters apparently reflects voters' high interest in
the election and because the system has become more familiar to the public.
The latest figure is 1.6 times higher than the number around the same time
period at 6,724,889 in the previous lower house election in 2005, and has
already exceeded the total number of 8,962,847 in the 2005 election.
The previous record for the number of early voters was around 10.8 million,
which was recorded in the 2007 election for the upper house.
==Kyodo