Respecting the discretionary power of the legislative body, the court has recognized the Diet's efforts to reform the election system. This is an appropriate judicial decision.
The Supreme Court's Grand Bench handed down a ruling that the October 2017 House of Representatives election, in which the maximum vote-value disparity was 1.98-to-1, was constitutional. This was a majority view supported by 11 of the 15 justices on the bench.
The top court had ruled that three other recent lower house elections held up to 2014 were all conducted "in a state of unconstitutionality." The maximum disparity in the weight of votes between the most and least populated constituencies for these three elections ranged from 2.43-to-1 to 2.13-to-1. Prior to the 2017 lower house election, the Diet cut the number of lower house seats by six in single-seat constituencies and rezoned some constituencies, reducing the disparity to less than 2-to-1.
The ruling praised such efforts made by the legislative branch, saying that the Diet "pursued step-by-step corrections to stabilize the election system, while responding to demands to ensure equality in vote value."
The ruling can be considered a realistic judgment that takes into account a provision of the law concerning the establishment of the Council on the House of Representatives Electoral Districts, which stipulates that corrections should be made so the vote-value disparity will not exceed 2-to-1.
Judicial judgments that give serious consideration to the realization of vote-value equality are conspicuous in recent years. There were high courts that ruled that a lower house election was "unconstitutional" and its results "invalid." The top court had strongly called for abolishing the current seat-distribution system, which allots one seat to each prefecture and then decides, in proportion to the population, how many additional seats each prefecture should be allocated in the single-seat section of the election.
Smoothly implement rezoning
It is undeniable that the current seat-distribution system has been a cause of vote-value disparity. As the top court had repeatedly pointed out, the Diet has decided to introduce after the 2020 census the so-called "Adams' method" of apportionment, which would more accurately reflect the population ratio than the current one.
The latest ruling has also indicated a viewpoint that the Adams' method "would be a measure to completely dissolve the impact of the seat allocation under the current allotment system." With this, the top court has rated positively the Diet's endeavor to develop a system to continuously reduce the vote disparity, in response to population changes in the future.
A lower house election under the Adams' seat-allocation method is expected to be held sometime in 2022 or later. The overconcentration of the population in Tokyo is still continuing. The number of seats allocated to Tokyo will increase markedly, while the number of those allotted to regional districts will drop. Yet another large-scale rezoning of the single-seat constituencies will become necessary.
The government should smoothly implement the rezoning that would accompany the introduction of the new method and make the rezoned constituencies widely known among the voters to be affected.
The top court has also pointed out again that vote-value equality is not the absolute criteria for deciding an election system. It would be undesirable, through the excessive pursuit of vote-gap reduction, to increase the number of municipalities that would be split into more than one constituency due to the rezoning.
Rezoning that takes into account such factors as the cohesion of a district and local transportation conditions is vital.
In the next lower house election, for which the Adams' method will not be adopted yet, the disparity could exceed 2-to-1 again. Both the ruling and opposition parties should continue their discussions on relevant issues, including increasing the total number of seats.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Dec. 20, 2018)
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