英語検定ライティング準１級（第178回）

市民権「市民権は勝ち取られたものという話」

10日前にあった東京都知事選挙では投票率が６割を超えていた。この数字をどのように捉えるのかは個人の感覚による。だが４割の有権者は投票を放棄した。都民の民度は高くない。
About 60 percent of voters participated in the Tokyo governor’s election, which took place about 10 days ago.
Whether this number is large or small should depend on individual sense of election, but actually about 40 percent of voters didn’t visit the election sites, so we might wonder if Tokyo residents are interested in their right to vote and determine their governor.

政治的アパシーは若者だけではない。中高年の有権者も忙しさにかまけて投票所には行かない。日曜日の都合が悪い場合は期日前投票制度もある。もっと多くの有権者に参加してほしい。
Most young people have been called “political apathy” for a long time, including what I used to be.
But such a sense belongs to numerous middle-aged people, which might make negative contributions to the electoral situation.
They are said to be too busy to join the election, which must be an empty excuse in vain because they could do early voting, which is the official electoral system.
Still more voters would have gone to election on that day.

無党派層は政治に興味がない訳ではない。投票したい政党がないだけだ。今回の選挙は政党を選ぶものではなかった。ソーシャルメディアを駆使した候補者は無党派層の心に刺さった。
Numerous independent voters aren’t interested in the election, which isn’t the truth because they cannot find the political party, whose manifests couldn’t appeal to their basic instincts after all.
In the case of this election, the voters had no right to support their favorite political party, and a certain candidate with a superior command of social media collected numerous popularities from a tremendous number of independent voters living in Tokyo.

日本は選挙権を勝ち取った歴史を持たない。ヨーロッパの権利獲得に無血勝利はほぼない。日本人は権力と闘う気概を奪われてきた。優しすぎてつけ込まれる。損してばかりなんだよな。
Japan has no history that ordinary citizens won the voting rights against their administrations.
In contrast, European citizens have won their citizenship with their blood running on the battlefield.
Japan has the history that ordinary citizens have been robbed of their aggressiveness to resist against their authorities, so those around us could take advantage of our too friendly a character.
Japan has been drawing the poor lottery so far.