The December general election was unconstitutional due to a significant disparity in the weight of votes, the Takamatsu High Court ruled Friday, although it refrained from invalidating the poll outcome in a western constituency.
The outcome mirrors recent rulings on the poll by other courts, which similarly found the disparities to be unconstitutional or verging on unconstitutional, but did not overturn the election results.
The number of voters in the Kagawa No. 1 constituency was about 1.5 times as large as that in the least-populous electoral zone, in Kochi Prefecture, but the court dismissed the plaintiffs' demand that the poll results in the constituency be nullified.