Weight of One Vote	No.653 October 13, 2009
		The Grand Bench of the Supreme Court (Chief Justice Takesaki Hironobu) dismissed on September 30 the suits filed by lawyers of Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture, who had appealed to nullify the results of the 2007 Upper House election. The lawyers’ group sued against the local election control committees for the biased seat distribution in terms of constituency, asserting the election outcomes as unconstitutional because a gap of one vote varied from one constituency to another, in maximum, as heavy as 4.86 times in weight. The highest court, however, regarded the case as constitutional, rejecting the demand of plaintiffs. ELECTION SYSTEM TO CRIPPLE WILL OF CITIZENS Court Ordered to Review System The ruling told the seat distribution is concordant with Constitution, but simultaneously it pointed out: (1) from the point of equality each ballot is estimated to have different weight, thus producing gross inequality in the elections, and (2) it is hard to diminish the existing big differences by simply alternating the fixed number of seats, and therefore it is unequivocally necessary to review the election system itself. The Diet should examine the system right away. Though the Supreme Court did not rule on the controversial gaps, which vary as highly as 4.86 times in certain districts, it referred for the first time to necessity for the Diet to overhaul the election structure of the House of Councilors. In June, 2006, the number of seats per constituency for the Upper House was set, resulting in ‘four seats more and four seats less’,. This actually shrank the gap, down from 5.13 times of the year 2004, but since then no step has been taken to further contract it. The court decision given in October, 2006, by the Grand Bench of the Supreme Court had approved as constitutional the results of 2004 Upper House election, requesting the Diet to work more to correct the bias. The recent sentence was supported by ten justices out of fifteen in the Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Takesaki, but the other five, including Nakagawa Ryoji, delivered arguments to approve the plaintiffs. Bottom Line of Democracy Everybody knows that an election system should rightly work, reflecting aspirations of people as the essential, minimal basis of democracy so that it may function normally to practice the majority will. Equality is a universal principle of modern judiciary. Constitution of Japan, under its Article 14, specifies equality under the law and provides that ‘we, the Japanese people, acting through our duly elected representatives in the National Diet’ in the preamble. It proclaims that the Diet is the highest organ of state power, in which the will of people must be rightly reflected. However, under the existing election system of the Upper House, in some constituencies a voter has per ballot a value equivalent to five votes in maximum compared with that of other constituencies, while a completely opposite phenomenon occurs in certain prefectures where the electorate can exercise only one-fifth of the voting right. The Upper House Election Law was enacted in 1947, when the maximum gap was estimated as 2.6 times as big. It was expanded in 1992 to 6.59 times due to the uneven population growth in the geographical terms. The gap in 2010 is prospected to reach a digit of five. For this reason a drastic reform of the system is sought: a bloc constituency system, a broader district system which should disregard borders of prefectures, or a system without constituencies in which only proportional representation should be employed. An acute action is needed. A 50 % gain in votes brings 70% of Seats Let’s look at the elections of the Lower House. Today the small constituency system is combined with proportional representation. The last general elections held in the end of August this year the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won 308 seats, which was the biggest victory in its history. We can see magic here. The DPJ won 47% of the total votes in the small constituencies, which gave the party 221 seats, which is 74% of the total seats of the Lower House of 300. The small constituency system admits a rule ‘with one more vote, you win, one less vote, you lose’. Thus the system cripples the will of citizens in the different way from that of ‘a gap per vote’. In the said election the DPJ won 42% of the proportional representation ballots, which gave the party 87 seats, the ratio of which is 48% of the 180 seats set for the Lower House. The seats the DPJ obtained represent relatively a right figure. No perfect election system does exist. If a vote produces quite a big gap as big as five times, almost a half of the cast ballots are killed. Under the system voters cannot enjoy equality, or they are prevented from having the duly elected Diet representatives.