Signs of fraud have emerged in a petition calling for the dismissal of Hideaki Omura, the governor of Aichi Prefecture in Japan. 

Japan’s Asahi Shimbun said Tuesday the Aichi prefectural election administration commission found that 83 percent of the 435-thousand signatures submitted on the petition are likely to be invalid because they show similar penmanship. 

The commission said roughly 90 percent of the signatures suspected of being invalid are believed to be forgeries made by multiple individuals.

The commission also said about 48 percent of the signatures were those of people who are not on the list of eligible voters.

The petition against Omura was launched last August in protest of exhibits put on in a section of the Aichi Triennale arts festival held in Nagoya and elsewhere in the prefecture in 2019. Among displays that triggered controversy was a statute of a girl symbolizing victims of Japan’s wartime sex slavery. 

Authorities are mulling a request for an investigation to find the people behind the alleged forgeries.