6/25/2020 Details of 1999 (Gyo-Tsu) 35 | Judgments of the Supreme Court such support and thus the system has the characteristic of facilitating changes in government. On the other hand, it also has the characteristic that, in each constituency, those who do not belong to a political party which has nationwide support may gain a seat if they have high support in the constituency. Therefore, it cannot be said that the system is beneficial to a sole specific political party. It cannot be denied that under this system, there is a possibility of dead votes emerging, but such votes emerge under any system. It is no different from the medium size constituency system in that it is sufficient for the successful candidate to gain a relative majority, and that there is a possibility that the number of remaining votes (dead votes) is higher than the total votes of the candidates combined. The fact that the highest gainer of the votes gains the seat cannot be regarded as being other than the reflection of the general will of the voters, and therefore, this cannot be a ground for unconstitutionality. Thus, the small constituency system can be regarded as one of the rational methods of reflecting the will of the people on the allocation of Dietary seats by election and does not contradict the status of the members of the Diet elected in this way with their nature as representatives of the people nationwide. Therefore, the adoption of the small constituency system is not in excess of the scope of the discretion of Diet and cannot be regarded as being against the requirements of the Constitution or its provisions as argued by the appellant. 3 (1) It is understood that the Constitution requires equality in the substance of the right to vote, in other words, equality in the effect each voter's vote has in electing a member of the Diet, i.e. the value of the vote. However, equality of the value of the vote is not the sole and absolute criterion for designing the system of election; the system must be built in a harmonious way by taking into consideration other policy goals and grounds which can be legitimately considered by the Diet. Therefore, insofar as the specific measures adopted by Diet can be acknowledged as being within the reasonable exercise of its discretion, it is permissible even if the equality in the value of votes is affected as a result. The Constitution requires that when adopting a system of dividing the country into constituencies for the election of members of the House of Representatives, in order to determine the demarcation of constituency boundaries and the allocation of seats as part of the election system, the most important and fundamental criterion should be that the number of voters or the population for each member is kept as equal as possible. However, there are many other factors which the Diet is entitled to take into account. Especially, in light of the role which prefectures have performed in the politics and administration of the country in practice, and the fact that prefectures have a significant place in the life of the people and their feeling, prefectures are fundamental and unavoidable elements in demarcating constituency boundaries. Moreover, when further dividing prefectures into constituencies, past records of elections, coherence as a constituency, administrative divisions such as cities, towns and villages, the size, and concentration of the population, the structure of the population, transportation, geography and other elements are to be considered. Furthermore, the method of reflecting social changes, such as the concentration of people in large cities, onto the demarcation of constituency boundaries and the allocation of seats is one of the elements which can be taken into account by the Diet. Thus, when deciding the actual demarcation of constituency boundaries and the allocation of seats, there are policy and technical elements which should be taken into account, while there is no objective criterion on how to consider these elements and reflect them in the actual decision. Therefore, the constitutionality of the provision on the demarcation of constituency boundaries and the allocation of seats will have to be determined by deciding whether the actual decision of the Diet can be regarded as being within the reasonable exercise of their discretionary power. If the value of the vote of each voter is unequal under the actual system of the demarcation of constituency boundaries and the allocation of seats, and if the system is such that it cannot be regarded as reasonable https://www.courts.go.jp/app/hanrei_en/detail?id=458 5/23