3 More Rulings Find Japan Upper House Poll Constitutional

Tokyo, Oct. 30 (Jiji Press)–Three Japanese high courts ruled Thursday that the July 20 election for the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the country’s parliament, was constitutional in terms of vote-value disparities. The rulings by Tokyo, Nagoya and Takamatsu high courts, were the third to fifth on a total of 16 lawsuits filed with 14 high courts or high court branches across the country by two groups of lawyers. The group led by lawyer Hidetoshi Masunaga demanded that the election results be invalidated, arguing that the maximum vote-value gap of 3.13 times in the election is against the Constitution in light of the equal value of votes. But the petitions were dismissed by the Tokyo, Nagoya and Takamatsu courts. With the latest rulings, the number of those finding the election constitutional increased to four. Last week, Osaka High Court ruled it constitutional. On Wednesday, meanwhile, Nagoya High Court’s Kanazawa branch ruled that the election was conducted “in a state of unconstitutionality.” The focus in the series of lawsuits is how the courts would assess the expansion in the maximum vote-value gap from 3.03 times in the previous 2022 Upper House election. No revision has been made in the electoral system since the previous election, which the Supreme Court ruled constitutional. In the latest election, the number of eligible voters per Upper House seat was the lowest in the prefectural constituency of Fukui and the highest in the Kanagawa prefectural constituency. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]