Japan Press Weekly

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2012 October 17 - 23 [POLITICS]

Supreme Court judges voting inequalities as unconstitutional

The Supreme Court ruled on October 17 that the disproportionate weight of single votes in the 2010 Upper House election is unconstitutional.

The disparity between values of votes in that election reached a level of 5 to 1.

This is the second time for the Supreme Court to rule that an Upper House election was unconstitutional following the election in 1992.

Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi on the same day issued comments that the court judgment is just.

Ichida also calls on other political parties to resume negotiations in order to correct the discrepancy in the value of individual votes among different electoral districts.

For the past 2 years, political parties have held talks on the issue and almost all parties agreed to rebuild the Upper House election system based on “11 separate electoral blocs under the proportional representation system”, which was proposed by the then Upper House president.

However, the governing Democratic Party of Japan and the largest opposition Liberal Democratic Party in August suddenly submitted to the Diet a “reform” plan that will shift only 4 seats from less-populated electoral districts to more-populated ones, and steamrollered the bill through the Upper House. The bill is to be discussed in the Lower House.