Latest news with #HidetoshiMasunaga
Japan Today
22-07-2025
- Politics
- Japan Today
Suits filed to null upper house election over vote disparity
Lawyers on Tuesday filed lawsuits at high courts across Japan to nullify the results of Sunday's House of Councillors election and seek a rerun, saying the disparities in the weight of votes violated the principle of equality under the Constitution. While the vote gap had been on a declining trend since the mergers of two pairs of less-populated prefectures into two constituencies in 2015, the maximum disparity in the latest upper house election expanded to 3.13-fold from 3.03-fold in the previous race in 2022. The Supreme Court said in its 2023 ruling that resolving such disparities is an urgent matter. It had ruled that the upper house poll results in 2010 and 2013, as well as those of House of Representatives races in 2009, 2012 and 2014, were in a "state of unconstitutionality" but stopped short of invalidating the election results. The lawsuits filed Tuesday morning by two groups of lawyers included those submitted to the Osaka High Court, the Hiroshima High Court's Matsue and Okayama branches and the Fukuoka High Court's Naha branch. "Even though the top court said the disparities should be corrected, this election was held under the same system," lawyer Hidetoshi Masunaga said at a press conference after filing the suit with the Osaka court. Calculations by Kyodo News based on data released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications showed that Kanagawa Prefecture had the highest number of voters per lawmaker and Fukui Prefecture the lowest. Vote weight disparities in upper house elections were 5.00-fold in 2010 and 4.77-fold in 2013. The disparities then fell since Tottori and Shimane prefectures were merged into one constituency and Tokushima and Kochi prefectures into another ahead of the 2016 election. The top court ruled that the disparity of up to 3.08-fold in 2016 and 3.00-fold in 2019 were constitutional. © KYODO
The Mainichi
22-07-2025
- Politics
- The Mainichi
Suits filed to null Japan's upper house election over vote disparity
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Lawyers on Tuesday filed lawsuits at high courts across Japan to nullify the results of Sunday's House of Councillors election and seek a rerun, saying the disparities in the weight of votes violated the principle of equality under the Constitution. While the vote gap had been on a declining trend since the mergers of two pairs of less-populated prefectures into two constituencies in 2015, the maximum disparity in the latest upper house election expanded to 3.13-fold from 3.03-fold in the previous race in 2022. The Supreme Court said in its 2023 ruling that resolving such disparities is an urgent matter. It had ruled that the upper house poll results in 2010 and 2013, as well as those of House of Representatives races in 2009, 2012 and 2014, were in a "state of unconstitutionality" but stopped short of invalidating the election results. The lawsuits filed Tuesday morning by two groups of lawyers included those submitted to the Osaka High Court, the Hiroshima High Court's Matsue and Okayama branches and the Fukuoka High Court's Naha branch. "Even though the top court said the disparities should be corrected, this election was held under the same system," lawyer Hidetoshi Masunaga said at a press conference after filing the suit with the Osaka court. Calculations by Kyodo News based on data released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications showed that Kanagawa Prefecture had the highest number of voters per lawmaker and Fukui Prefecture the lowest. Vote weight disparities in upper house elections were 5.00-fold in 2010 and 4.77-fold in 2013. The disparities then fell since Tottori and Shimane prefectures were merged into one constituency and Tokushima and Kochi prefectures into another ahead of the 2016 election. The top court ruled that the disparity of up to 3.08-fold in 2016 and 3.00-fold in 2019 were constitutional.
Japan Times
22-07-2025
- Politics
- Japan Times
Lawyers file lawsuit to nullify Upper House election
A group of lawyers filed a lawsuit with Osaka High Court on Tuesday to nullify the results in six electoral districts, including Kyoto, Osaka and Hyogo, of Sunday's House of Councilors election, claiming that the election was unconstitutional in terms of vote-value disparities. Similar lawsuits are expected to be filed elsewhere in the country later on Monday. According to estimates by Jiji Press, the maximum vote-value disparity in the Upper House election was 3.13 times, between Fukui, which had 308,428 voters per Upper House seat, and Kanagawa, which had 965,500 voters. The figure was up from 3.03 times in the previous election three years ago. In the written complaint, the lawyers argue that the apportionment provisions for Upper House seats did not meet the constitutional requirement of population-based proportional representation. "Japan is the only major developed country that uses proportional representation not based on population," Hidetoshi Masunaga from the lawyer group told a news conference. "We hope the court will declare the election unconstitutional." In 2023, the Supreme Court deemed the disparities in the 2022 Upper House election constitutional, saying that there was not necessarily a significant expanding trend in the disparities, while noting that there had barely been concrete progress in efforts to correct them.
