Supreme Court Finds Upper House Election in Unconstitutional Situation

The Supreme Court found that the gap of one vote in July 2025 Upper House election was made in an unconstitutional situation. Although the lawmakers in the house have been discussing reform of election system, the court determined that the effort was insufficient. As demographic centralization is accelerated, it is inevitable that current election system is fundamentally rebuild to guarantee equal participation in politics. 

On the voting day of the Upper House election, Kanagawa prefecture had 7,712,688 eligible voters for four seats, while Fukui prefecture did 616,532 for one seat. One vote in Fukui district had 3.13 times greater value than that in Kanagawa district. This gap between the biggest and smallest value of one vote became greater than in the previous election in 2022, which was 3.03.

 

The Supreme Court regarded this gap as in a trend of getting bigger. Knowing Upper House’s effort to revise its election system, the court found that the gap could not be ignored any longer. “We cannot help estimate that the discussion in the Diet is in a deadlock,” said the verdict. While the conclusion was an integrated decision of fifteen justices, five added their opinions that the election had been constitutional, recognizing some progress in the Diet discussion.

 

The Upper House introduced integrated districts in 2016, in which districts of Tottori and Shimane were reformed into one district as well as Tokushima and Kochi. Although the maximum gap of value of one vote became narrow by the reform, it is getting wider in recent elections. The Lower House has been making effort to contain the gap among single-seat districts within two times. The constitution guarantees each citizen equality under law.

 

One option for narrowing the gap is further integration of prefectural districts. The prefectures with least eligible voters include Fukui, Yamanashi, Saga, Wakayama or Akita. Those prefectures do not share border each other. If two of those rural prefectures are integrated in one district, the voters may be forced to vote for a candidate living in a prefecture far away.

 

Parties in the Upper House accumulated discussion. The Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party for the People think that they should change the provision of constitution, if current system is unconstitutional. They argue that the constitution can be amended for each prefecture to have at least one seat, regardless the gap of one-vote value. However, they do not have two-third majority in both chambers of Diet, which is needed to amend the constitution. Although the House changed its English name from House of Councillors to Senate, it has no stronger authority to represent each prefecture than the Lower House has.

 

The Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan opposes constitutional amendment for this issue. Komeito proposes fundamental reform of election system which introduces proportional representation with eleven blocks for all the seats. It is inevitable, anyway, for the House to have a fundamental change to meet the demand of the Supreme Court.

 

This decision of the Supreme Court is a conclusion of sixteen lawsuits against local election offices. While those offices are the defendants, it is the Upper House that is responsible for promoting the reform. Not only the legislative branch but the executive branch is also responsible for demographic decentralization. This reform requires better demographic policy to adjust the gap of value of one vote.

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