6/25/2020 Details of 2001 (Gyo-Tsu) 82 | Judgments of the Supreme Court principle to restrict the right to vote of citizens residing in Japan or their exercise of the right to vote, aside from imposing certain restrictions on the right to vote of those who have acted against fair elections; in order to restrict any citizens' right to vote or their exercise of the right to vote, there must be grounds to regard such restrictions as unavoidable; such unavoidable grounds cannot be found unless it is deemed to be practically impossible or extremely difficult to allow the exercise of the right to vote while maintaining fairness in elections without such restrictions; and, it is in violation of the Constitution to restrict citizens from exercising the right to vote without such unavoidable grounds). 2. The mechanism of the election system applicable to members of each House is fixed by the Public Offices Election Law. In the past, persons not listed on the electoral register and those not eligible to be listed on the electoral register were precluded from exercising the right to vote. Persons eligible to be listed on the electoral register were Japanese citizens aged 20 years or over having address in areas of a municipality in Japan who continued to be listed on the basic resident register of the municipality for three consecutive months or more since the day on which their resident cards in the municipality had been prepared. Japanese citizens residing abroad were excluded from the electoral register because they were not listed on the basic resident register of any municipalities in Japan. For this reason, Japanese citizens residing abroad were unable to exercise the right to vote in any elections of members of Houses of the Diet. By the partial amendment of the Public Offices Election Law in 1994, the combination of the single-seat constituency system and the proportional representation system was adopted for elections of HR members which had been held under the multiple-seat constituency system for years. By the partial amendment of the Public Offices Election Law by Law No. 47 of 1998, the overseas electoral register system was introduced, which opened a path for Japanese citizens residing abroad to be listed on the overseas electoral register and enabled them to vote in elections of members of the Houses of the Diet. However, Article 8 of the Supplementary Provisions of the amended Public Offices Election Law provides that, for the time being, the new system shall be applicable only to elections of HR members under the proportional representation system and elections of HC members under the proportional representation system, and therefore, for the time being, it shall not be applicable to elections of HR members under the single-seat constituency system and elections of HC members under the constituency system. It is explained that the reason why this provision gives Japanese citizens residing abroad the opportunity to vote only in elections of members of the House of the Diet under the proportional representation system is that it is extremely difficult to provide Japanese citizens residing abroad with correct information on individual candidates during a limited period of electoral campaign, 12 to 17 days. 3. As mentioned above, in the past, Japanese citizens residing abroad had not been given the opportunity to vote in elections of members of the Houses of the Diet. By the legal amendment in 1998, the Diet gave them the opportunity to vote in elections of members of the Houses of the Diet under the proportional representation system while denying their opportunity, for the time being, to vote in elections of HR members under the single-seat constituency system and elections of HC members under the constituency system in light of the significant difficulty in providing those residing abroad with information on individual candidates. These choices made by the Diet can be evaluated as having resulted from its due consideration regarding what kind of voting system is suitable, in connection with the current mechanism of the election system, for Japanese citizens residing abroad to ensure fair, equal, and peaceful elections. It is appropriate to construe that these choices are reasonable to a certain extent amid various social and technical difficulties in providing correct information on candidates, securing an environment where citizens can vote of their own free will, and preventing election fraud, that they do not constitute an abuse of the discretion allowed to the Diet or go beyond the bounds of such discretion, and that even if consideration is also given to the https://www.courts.go.jp/app/hanrei_en/detail?id=1264 18/21