Communities all over Japan have a lot riding of the success of their yurukyara – mascots with people inside. Today on NHK’s evening news show, a good deal of time was spent discussing a kind of ballot stuffing that has been alleged in the election of this year’s number one yurukyara. First, here’s a link to the NHK video (in Japanese):
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20181118/k10011715301000.html
The images you see are from that video. NHK focused on claims that Yokkaiichi got municipal employees to vote en masse for their character. Kumamon came up in the context of a discussion of the motivation for such cheating: money. Kumamon is known to have brought the prefecture lots of money in merchandise sales and to have been effective in promoting the prefecture. Kumamon’s status in this regard was significantly enhanced by its (his?) victory in the first yurukyara contest, which was held in 2011. So, the idea is that Yokkaiichi has been willing to cheat in order to reap similar benefits. Here’s an English article describing claims against Yokkaiichi:
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20181112/p2a/00m/0na/013000c
– Kirk