A group of lawyers filed a lawsuit with the 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 Tuesday.
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.
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