High courts in Japan rule July election unconstitutionality despite Abe's ele

Two more high courts in Japan ruled Monday that July's upper house election was "in a state of unconstitutionality" due to voter weight disparities, an issue that has plagued the nation's electoral system.

The rulings handed down by the presiding judges at the Takamatsu High Court and the Nagoya High Court mark the fifth such ruling following lawyers nationwide contesting the July vote and filing suits with 14 high courts here.

Two civil groups of lawyers involved in filing lawsuits at high courts across Japan have been seeking the annulment of the upper house vote and have been making individual claims against the electoral committee of each constituency.

The lawyers involved have stated that the voter-representative ratio disparity has been found to be as high as 4.77 times in the most extreme case, severely undermining voters' rights to equality as guaranteed by Japan's Constitution.

In the latest rulings handed down Monday, the judges, while conceding the election was "in a state of unconstitutionality," refused the plaintiffs' demands that the electoral results in seven of the affected constituencies be nullified.

The lawyers involved will now take their case to Japan's Supreme Court.

Both high court judges on Monday stated that there was an " excessive inequality" in the voter-representative ratio disparity at the time of the July election, but Presiding Judge Hiroshi Yamashita of the Takamatsu High Court said the disparity did not equivocally violate the Constitution, as altering the allocation of seats in the upper house, despite vociferous calls from civic groups, high courts, the electorate and the Supreme Court for parliamentarians to do so, falls within the discretion of parliament.

While urging changes be made Yamashita and Presiding Judge Masami Ichikawa of the Kanazawa branch of the Nagoya High Court said that parliament did not have enough time during the election to fix the disparity.

Monday's ruling followed similar verdicts handed down by high courts in Hiroshima and Hokkaido in December who also found that due to the disparity the election was "in a state of unconstitutionality," but refused to nullify the results.

Plaintiffs have filed nine other such suits with high courts in Japan, claiming unconstitutionality, with the aim of having the results nullified, with the rulings expected this year.

Due to the number of legitimate claims by lawyers on behalf of the numerous constituencies nationwide, pressure is increasing on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe too, as per his election campaign pledge, reform the electoral process and ensure the voter-representative ratio disparity be corrected and not call Japan's Constitution into question.

The severity of the voting disparity has already been taken up by Japan's Supreme Court in November, when Japan's top court ruled that December's lower house election that saw Abe and the now ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) brought into power in 2012 was in some districts unconstitutional, but the top court opted not to invalid the highly contentious result.

The Supreme Court's ruling follows high courts across Japan declaring that due to voting disparities, the results of the 2012 general election were unconstitutional.

Two of the high courts even went as far as to nullify the results, but political pundits have said that the top court invalidating the entire election would have caused mayhem as the nation has never had to face such an issue.

In 2011 the Supreme Court slammed the electoral map for the lower house of parliament, stating it was in a "state of unconstitutionality" due to it "disenfranchising" the electorate and as such electoral reform was in "dire need."

Specifically, the top court said in March 2011 that the gap of up to 2.3 times in the weight of votes in a 2009 lower house election was "in a state of unconstitutionality."

However, the 2012 general election went ahead regardless, with Abe stating he would reform the electoral system once he was in office, a pledge yet to come to full fruition despite some revisions being made, political analysts have noted, adding that he has had plenty of time to enact a fully constitutional electoral map.

The revisions made thus far have reduced the maximum disparity to just under two, but the new measures were not fully finalized prior to the snap election being called that saw Abe and his LDP regain power in Japan following the 2012 elections.

Re-zoning to address the disparity has since been completed but authorities say that some serious disparities still remain between urban and rural areas and in some cases have widened.

In the past 60-years analysts have noted that the Supreme Court has never overturned an election result because of a voting disparity, despite a number of post-election backlashes from an electorate who feel they have been hugely misrepresented.

The top court, noting some electoral revisions had been made, has insisted Abe and parliament do far more to comprehensively resolve the issue of the vote-value gap, with 3 out of the 14 Supreme Justices believing that the 2012 general election was in direct contravention of Japan's Constitution and as such the election results should be nullified.