The Hiroshima High Court ruled Thursday that the outcome of the July Upper House election in Okayama Prefecture should be invalidated due to an unconstitutional disparity in the value of votes between constituencies.
The decision by the court's Okayama branch is the first among 14 similar lawsuits filed with high courts nationwide by groups of lawyers.
They argue that the disparity — in which some votes carried as much as 4.77 times the weight of others — in the nationwide July 21 Upper House election violates the equal-protection clause in the Constitution.