Photo/Illutration Lawyers hold a news conference in Tokyo after the Tokyo High Court hands down a ruling Feb. 2 on the disparity in the value of a vote in the October 2021 Lower House election. (Shunsuke Abe)

The Tokyo High Court ruled that the Lower House election held in October was constitutional despite a disparity in the value of each vote.

“It cannot be said that the value of a vote was noticeably unequal,” the court said Feb. 2.

It was the second time in as many days for a court to hand down a ruling with regard to the election that kept the Liberal Democratic Party in power.

The Takamatsu High Court, the first to hand down a ruling on the October election, concluded Feb. 1 it was “noticeably unequal” and one step short of being unconstitutional.

A group of lawyers filed lawsuits in multiple high courts or their branches around Japan, demanding an annulment in votes cast in 109 electoral districts in 11 prefectures, including Tokyo.

The group contends the election was unconstitutional because the inequality in the value of a vote between the least and most populated districts per Lower House member came to 2.08.

The lawyers argued that the disparity “violates the Constitution that provides for equality in the value of a vote.”

The Tokyo court clearly thought otherwise and rejected the call to annul the outcome, just as the Takamatsu court did.

The lawyers are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Grand Bench of the Supreme Court has acknowledged that the three Lower House elections since 2009 were each held in “a state of unconstitutionality.”

The Diet in 2016 decided to adopt a new method of allocating seats to prefectures based on the ratio of population to prevent the maximum disparity among voting districts from becoming more than double.

As a transitional measure, the Diet decided to reduce six seats in single-seat electoral districts.

However, the new allocation was not implemented in time for the 2021 election.

This resulted in a disparity of 2.08 between Tottori Prefecture’s No. 1 district where the number of voters per Diet member was the smallest and Tokyo’s No. 13 district where it was the largest.

The latest ruling by the Tokyo court assessed the Diet’s efforts to address zoning of voting districts, noting that its tinkering with the system was “coordinated to prevent the disparity in a vote from far exceeding double.”

The court said the reason for the large disparity stemmed from the “movement of people” that could not have been envisaged.

It also took note of the fact that only four months prior to election day it became clear the disparity would be more than double. Because of this, and the lack of time to address the situation, the court concluded the election “did not violate the Constitution.”

The Takamatsu court came to a different conclusion. It identified the disparity that came to more than double in some districts on election day as the problem.

The election went ahead in “an unequal situation that cannot be overlooked,” it said, and for this reason deemed it to have been held in “a state of unconstitutionality.”

The lawyers, in a news conference after the Tokyo court ruling, said that since sovereignty lies with the people, the value of a vote must be the same.

“A two-fold disparity is unconstitutional,” one lawyer said.

The group filed lawsuits in 14 high courts or their branches around Japan.

The other high courts or their branches are expected to hand down rulings shortly, leaving it to the Supreme Court to issue an integrated judgement by the end of the year.

(This article was written by Yuri Murakami and Shunsuke Abe.)

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