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6/25/2020 Details of 1996 (Gyo-Tsu) 28 | Judgments of the Supreme Court the statements in the written requests/oaths submitted by the voters were insuﬃcient to judge that the grounds they argued fell under any of the statutory grounds for absentee voting and therefore in order to make such judgment, it was necessary to require these voters to give oral explanation, which was actually not given. (2) At the place for making an entry for voting provided by the City Election Administration Commission, on some occasions such as when the persons registered as voting observers for absentee voting had lunch, persons other than those registered took turns and observed absentee voting, and signed their names as observers on the outer envelopes for absentee voting. For ten absentee votes cast on such occasions, the oﬃcials engaged in assisting the execution of absentee voting aﬀairs merely observed and signed their names as observers while they proceeded with said aﬀairs, under the circumstances wherein they were unable to fully play the role of observer as a monitoring organ. (3) The chairperson of the City Election Administration Commission sent outer envelopes for absentee voting with no name or seal of the City Election Administration Commission indicated or aﬃxed thereto, to the voters who wished to cast absentee votes by mail, and because of this, all of the 18 absentee votes sent by mail were enclosed in the outer envelopes with no name or seal of the City Election Administration Commission indicated or aﬃxed thereto. (4) According to the results released by the election meeting, the diﬀerence between the number of votes gained by Candidate A (the winning candidate) and that gained by Candidate B (the defeated candidate) was 958, and the share of absentee votes in all votes gained is 12.5% for Candidate A and 6.5% for Candidate B. It is a basic principle that each voter should go to the voting place to vote on the date of election. The absentee voting system is available only for exceptional cases, and it cannot be denied that this system has the risk of being used as a means for committing illegal acts. For this reason, the Act, as well as the Order and the Ordinance for Enforcement of the Public Oﬃces Election Act (hereinafter referred to as the “Ordinance”), both of which follow the provisions of the Act, strictly stipulate the requirements, procedures and formats for absentee voting in order to prevent the abuse of the absentee voting system and avoid illegal votes getting mixed with legal votes. Unless absentee voting is administered and executed pursuant to the provisions of these statutes, abuse of absentee voting or mixture of illegal votes would occur, which would inevitably make it diﬃcult to realize a fair election (See 1962 (O) No. 697, judgment of the Second Petty Bench of the Supreme Court of December 26, 1962, Minshu Vol. 16, No. 12, at 2581). In particular, the chairperson of the election administration commission who has received a request from a voter for the delivery of a voting slip, etc. shall strictly examine whether or not the grounds the voter argues fall under any of the grounds for absentee voting prescribed in the items of Article 49, paragraph (1) of the Act, and shall respond to the request for delivery only when he/she judges that any of the statutory grounds apply. Needless to say, the duty to examine the grounds for absentee voting is an extremely important and fundamental duty that the chairperson of the election administration commission should fulﬁll in the course of administration and execution of absentee voting. According to the facts legally determined by the court of prior instance mentioned above, the chairperson of the City Election Administration Commission, with regard to the absentee voting conducted for the election in question, cannot be deemed to have fulﬁlled the duty to examine whether or not the grounds the voters argued fell under any of the statutory grounds for absentee voting, and such failure to fulﬁll this duty should inevitably be deemed to be in violation of Article 49, paragraph (1) of the Act and Article 53, paragraph (1) of the Order. In addition, in view of the fact that the ten absentee votes mentioned in (2) above were in eﬀect cast without observers, which is in violation of Article 56, paragraph (2) of the Order, the City Election Administration Commission does not seem to have recognized the importance of the role of voting observers. The 18 absentee votes mentioned in (3) above can also be deemed to be in violation of Article 59-4, paragraph (3) of the Order and Appended https://www.courts.go.jp/app/hanrei_en/detail?id=262 5/8

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1996 (Gyo Tsu) 28 [Judgment of the Second Petty Bench, partially dismissed, partially quashed, and partially terminated]

Judgment

Question Presented: Whether denying absentee ballots to voters outside of the country for official ballots is sufficient to dispute the election result.

Alleged Acts: When a voter is outside of the municipality on the election date for unavoidable business that individual qualifies for an absentee ballot. The chairperson must examine those ballot to determine whether they classify as unavoidable business.1,713 absentee ballots of 17,512 total votes were cast. 293 voters cast absentee ballots stating that they were unable to go to the voting place of election day without additional explanation. The voters failed to mention the purposes of that trip so the court could assess whether they were classified as municipal business. In order to be defined as unavoidable business the trip must be difficult to reschedule or a courtesy according to socially accepted ideas. The chairman failed to require additional explanation into the need for an absentee ballot.

Summary: The court determined that the administration failed to provide proper training on absentee ballots and how to deal with them. Thus, the inexperienced voters did not look to whether the voter met the unavoidable business standard. 56 of those absentee ballots clearly failed to meet the threshold. 612 lack sufficient information to determine whether the threshold was met. 18 absentee ballots were counted without corresponding names. In the election the share of absentee ballots for the winning candidate was 12.5%. The share of absentee ballots for the defeated candidate was 6.5%. The court stated that absentee ballots were avaliable in exception cases to diminish the risk of voter fraud. The court found the number of absentee ballots and training failures sufficient to question the overall fairness of the voting process. The court notably reach this conclusion even though — after excluding the arguably valid absentee ballots — the number of ballots in question was less than the victory margin. Further, the number released after the election exceeded the total number of electors by 16 votes.

Conclusion: The impact of the voting disparity were severe enough to question the fairness of the election. The court determined that the disparities were likely to change the outcome of the election.

Legal Issue(s)

Disputing Results
Electoral Integrity

Region: Asia-Pacific

Country: Japan

Language of Decision

English

Court: Supreme Court

Election Type: General

Date of decision: May 31, 1996

Geolocation

Latitude: 35.73293062845158

Longitude: 139.75537618376217

: Geolocation

Primary Documents

1996 (Gyo-Tsu) 28 _ Judgments of the Supreme Court.pdf
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Election Judgments - IFES

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1996 (Gyo Tsu) 28 [Judgment of the Second Petty Bench, partially dismissed, partially quashed, and partially terminated]

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