Japan passes new law to cut number of lower house seats, address vote weight disparity

Japan's upper house of parliament passed a new law Friday to reduce the number of seats in the larger lower house by 10 seats to 465 with the bill also addressing issues of vote weight disparities in different regions across the country, which have plagued previous elections with results deemed to be in a state of unconstitutionality.

Six-single seat constituencies and four of the proportional representation seats from the lower house will be cut and some electoral districts will be rezoned, although the new zoning areas will only be eligible to vote next year, with any elections prior to that to be held under the former flawed system.

The new law will see single-seat constituencies cut in Aomori, Iwate, Mie, Nara, Kumamoto and Kagoshima prefectures, while the four proportional representation seats to be slashed will be from the Tohoku, Hokuriku-Shinetsu, Kinki and Kyushu regions.

The introduction of a seat allocation system under the new law, however, has been slammed by critics, as its introduction will follow the population census to be taken in 2020 and hence will not come into effect until at least 2022. Calls for this change to be made immediately have been vociferous.

To this end, numerous courts around Japan have found there to be a vote weight disparity in regions that were more densely populated compared to less populated areas and have ruled the relevant election results to be in a state of unconstitutionality or outright unconstitutional, but have not gone as far as to negate the results, as such a move is, as yet, unprecedented.

Japan's highest Supreme Court in November last year, for example, ruled that the lower house election results in 2014, in line with a unified view on a total of 17 lawsuits over vote-value disparities in the lower house, were "in a state of unconstitutionality."

The nation's top court, however, stopped short of invalidating the outcome of the election, despite being petitioned to do so.

Following an evaluation of the vote-value disparities in single-seat constituencies, it was found that a single vote in the least populated constituency was worth 2.13 times the value of one in the most heavily populated district, and that at least three elections have been ruled to be in a state of unconstitutionality since 1994 by the Supreme Court.

The court ruled similarly in regards to the results of the lower house election held in 2009 as well as in 2012. Endit