Final rulings in 16 lawsuits filed by two groups of lawyers at high courts and their branches around Japan over the burning issue of vote disparities in the July Upper House election were handed down by Nov. 15.

The plaintiffs argued that the July election in which the vote disparity was up to 3.03 times in some districts violated the Constitution that demands equality in the value of a single vote.

They called on the courts to nullify the election outcome.

One ruling declared the July election to be unconstitutional.

Eight courts ruled that the election was held in a “state of unconstitutionality,” while seven asserted it was constitutional.

The rulings were sterner than those given for the 2019 Upper House election, in which the vote disparity was up to 3.00 times.

Back then, 14 high courts ruled the election was constitutional, while two said it was held in a “state of unconstitutionality.”

The last ruling in the 16 lawsuits was handed down by the Akita branch of the Sendai High Court on Nov. 15.

The branch ruled that the election was held in a “state of unconstitutionality.”

Vote disparities occur when the number of voters per seat differs between electoral districts, leading to the unequal value of votes.

In the July election, the number of voters per seat was smallest in the Fukui electoral district at around 317,000.

In contrast, it was about 962,000 in the Kanagawa electoral district, where the number of electorates per seat was the largest.

The vote disparity between the two electoral districts was 3.03, meaning the value of a vote in Kanagawa Prefecture was only worth 0.33 of a vote cast in Fukui Prefecture.

Of the 16 lawsuits, a verdict of “unconstitutional” was handed down by the Sendai High Court on Nov. 1.

Its ruling stressed the importance of the principle of “one person, one vote” by saying, “The equality of the value of votes is the basis of the legitimacy of the Diet and the pillar of parliamentary democracy.”

The ruling placed importance on the fact that in addition to the wider overall disparity of votes compared with the 2019 election, 20 percent of all voters were in electoral districts in which the number of voters per seat was more than 3 times that of the Fukui electoral district.

In the 2019 election, only the Miyagi electoral district was affected by a vote disparity of more than 3 times that of Fukui Prefecture.

However, in the July election, the Tokyo and Kanagawa electoral districts joined Miyagi Prefecture in the same level of vote disparity.

The Sendai High Court blasted the Diet for doing nothing to rectify the situation even though it knew by November last year from national census results that a wider disparity in votes would occur in the July election.

Some of the eight rulings that declared the July election was held in a “state of unconstitutionality” criticized the fact that vote disparities are becoming more widespread, instead of simply denouncing the 3.03 discrepancy, the largest disparity in the latest election.

For example, the Tokyo and Sapporo high courts noted that as many as 21 million voters were in electoral districts in which the number of voters per seat was more than 3 times that of the Fukui electoral district in the July election.

However, the ruling by the Sapporo High Court did not go as far as to declare the election unconstitutional.

It just said, “It takes time to reform the system.”

The seven rulings that deemed the July election was constitutional displayed an appreciation for the fact that reforming the system takes time.

The Supreme Court has previously ruled that the 2010 and 2013 Upper House elections were held “in a state of unconstitutionality.”

The vote disparity was up to 5.00 and 4.77 in those elections, respectively.

The Supreme Court back then pointed out that the system of allocating one electoral district to every prefecture should be reviewed.

As a result, in 2016, Tottori and Shimane prefectures became one electoral district and so did Tokushima and Kochi prefectures.

However, partly because voter turnout fell after electoral districts were combined, strong resistance remains to this aspect of reform.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party has argued that the combined electoral districts should be de-merged by revising the Constitution.

On Nov. 8, a ruling on the disparity issue by the Okayama branch of the Hiroshima High Court said that reforming the system to allocate one electoral district for every prefecture “needs careful consideration.”

It added, “We cannot say that the Diet has lost the enthusiasm to correct the vote disparity just because the reform wasn’t achieved by the time of the July election.”

The Supreme Court will issue a unified ruling for the 16 lawsuits sometime next year, taking into consideration the verdicts by the high courts and their branches.

Attention is now focused on what verdict the Supreme Court will hand down if the government doesn’t act quickly to correct the status quo to correct the widening vote disparity.

“Courts rate the Diet’s performance lower now as its attempts to reform the vote disparity have not made much progress,” said Michihiko Misao, a lawyer who has worked on the vote disparity issue for many years. He was referring to the sterner court rulings for the latest election.