They have been deserted for eight months, and could stay that way for years, their former inhabitants now scattered around north-east Japan.

But the towns of Okuma and Futaba, located in the shadow of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, have shown that civic life must go on, even in the wake of a major nuclear accident. In one of the more surreal episodes of world democracy, tens of thousands were eligible to vote on Sunday for regional assemblies and mayors in towns that have all but ceased to exist.

Fukushima is the last of the three hardest-hit prefectures to go have gone to the polls since elections were postponed after the 11 March tsunami. Elections in Japan are usually characterised by early-morning speeches outside railway stations and last-ditch appeals for support from candidates perched atop campaign vehicles. Their faces, accompanied by pithy slogans, stare out from numerous billboards.

But none of that was evident in the 11 cities, towns and villages that lie inside the 12-mile exclusion zone imposed around Fukushima Daiichi in March.

Residents of Futaba and Okuma, which were electing mayors and assembly members on Sunday, have only been permitted brief visits home since the disaster to survey the damage and retrieve valuables and heirlooms.

Of the 80,000 people evacuated from the no-go zone, 58,000 are reportedly living in other prefectures, creating a logistical nightmare for officials who have had to oversee candidacy applications in temporary offices far from the election battlegrounds.

The absence of polling stations created a spike in the number of absentee ballots, forcing officials to extend the official campaign period by several days to give displaced residents time to size up the candidates and submit their ballot papers.

The campaign has been dominated by the slow pace of decontamination efforts and financial aid for the tens of thousands of people whose lives have been put on hold since March.

All of the parties and groups involved in the Fukushima assembly election said last month that they wanted nuclear power to be phased out. That degree of consensus may have kept voters away, however. As of 11am, the turnout was below 13%, according to Kyodo news agency.

For as long as they remain uninhabitable and their residents dispersed, the future of the contaminated areas will be clouded by uncertainty. According to a recent poll by Fukushima University, 27% of people living in the Futaba district said they had no intention of returning home. More than half of those aged below 35 said they planned to stay away.

That bodes ill for the area's survival, the Mainichi Shimbun said in a recent editorial: "The results have demonstrated that many younger residents, who are supposed to play a key role in restoring their disaster-ravaged communities, have given up on returning to their neighbourhoods for fear of radiation contamination."