TSUKUBA, Ibaraki Prefecture–Residents are voting online to determine the retirement package for the city’s mayor, who asked the public to decide how much they think he deserves.

About 130,000 people aged 15 or older are invited to rate Tatsuo Igarashi’s performance in his second term between now and November 11.The sale is made via the city’s smartphone application.

What makes the experiment so interesting is that the 46-year-old mayor could end up with as little as 22 yen or up to 20,394,000 yen ($134,000), or somewhere in between. It depends on the average rating it gets.

The app asks residents to rate the city’s administration during Igarashi’s second term, which ends this month, on a scale of 0 to 100, in 10-point increments.

As a reference for voting, the city government released a “road map” showing progress on 135 issues promised by the mayor during his campaign four years ago.

The document says policies have been “consistently implemented” on 86.1 percent of these issues, which range from social assistance and children’s education to community development and infrastructure construction. .

Online voting began on November 1 after Igarashi won his third term in the mayoral election on October 27.

Residents with the My Number identification card equipped with a valid electronic certificate are eligible.

Those who do not have a smartphone can vote at the town hall during the week if they have the My Number card. On certain days, votes are also accepted at branches.

Igarashi said he designed the system to fairly reflect residents’ ratings based on a debate over his first retirement allocation four years ago.

When he first ran for mayor, Igarashi promised not to accept a retirement stipend.

He eventually reduced the amount from 20,394,000 yen to 22 yen. By law, a retirement allowance cannot be reduced to zero.

While some people welcomed the decision, others said accepting a standard retirement stipend was a better way to help find a qualified successor.