6/25/2020 Details of 1996 (Gyo-Tsu) 28 | Judgments of the Supreme Court Reasons Concerning Reason for Final Appeal I argued by the appellant and the agents appointed for appeal, NAKAMURA Sanji, DOI Junichi, YAMAMOTO Shukuo, NOZAKI Satoshi, NAKAYAMA Takashi, and SUZAKI Hisamitsu The holdings of the court of prior instance concerning the point argued by the appellant and the appeal counsels can be affirmed as justifiable, and the judgment of prior instance does not contain such illegality as argued by them. Their argument is nothing more a claim criticizing the judgment of prior instance based on their own views, and therefore cannot be accepted. Concerning Reason for Final Appeal II argued by the appellant and the appeal counsels According to the facts legally determined by the court of prior instance, in the written requests/oaths submitted by the 293 voters who cast the absentee votes in question, as the grounds due to which they would be unable to go to the voting place and vote in person on the date of election, they only stated that they would be on a trip, without mentioning the purpose of the trip, or stated that they would be on a trip for personal business, etc., and said written requests/oaths did not contain any statement on the specific purpose of their trips. It is appropriate to construe that the grounds that the voter is on a trip on the date of election to outside the area of the municipality in which his/her voting district is located may be deemed to fall under the grounds for absentee voting prescribed in Article 49, paragraph (1), item (ii) of the Public Offices Election Act (hereinafter referred to as the “Act”), only when there are such circumstances where the purpose of the trip is business that is necessary out of courtesy according to the socially accepted ideas or where it is extremely difficult to reschedule the trip to any day other than the date of election. In consequence, according to the facts mentioned above, we must say that the chairperson of the Suzu City Election Administration Commission (hereinafter referred to as the “City Election Administration Commission”) has violated the provision of said item and Article 53, paragraph (1) of the Order for Enforcement of the Public Offices Election Act (hereinafter referred to as the “Order”) in that the chairperson of the commission, upon receiving requests from the voters for the delivery of voting slips for absentee voting and envelopes for absentee voting (hereinafter referred to as “voting slips, etc.”), delivered voting slips, etc. to the voters as requested, without requiring them to give oral explanation on whether or not there were such circumstances mentioned above. The holdings of the court of prior instance that go along with this reasoning can be affirmed as justifiable, and they are not in conflict with the judicial precedents cited by the appellant and the appeal counsels. The appellant and the appeal counselsʼ argument is a claim criticizing the judgment of prior instance based on their own views, and therefore cannot be accepted. Concerning Reason for Final Appeal III argued by the appellant and the appeal counsels I. With regard to the administration and execution of absentee voting in the election in question, in which a total of 1,713 out of 17,512 voters were absentee voters, the court of prior instance legally determined the following facts: (1) The City Election Administration Commission did not provide any training, etc. on how to deal with absentee voting for the officials who were in charge of the administration and execution of absentee voting as assistant personnel for the chairperson, and left most of the work for accepting requests for absentee voting to inexperienced officials. These officials who were in charge of the acceptance work accepted requests for the delivery of voting slips, etc. carelessly, without paying any special attention to whether or not there were grounds for absentee voting. As a result, there were 56 absentee votes that were accepted despite the fact that it was obvious from the statements in the written requests/oaths submitted by the voters that the grounds they argued did not fall under any of the statutory grounds for absentee voting, and 612 absentee votes (including the 293 absentee votes which are related to Reason for Final Appeal II) were also accepted even though https://www.courts.go.jp/app/hanrei_en/detail?id=262 4/8