Illegal elections in the United States

There’s a story in the Japanese news today about multiple lawsuits being filed against the government claiming that the recent upper-house election for the Japanese Diet is unconstitutional.

The Diet is Japan’s legislative body and would be similar to Congress in the United States. Just as in the United States the Diet consists of an upper and lower house, although in Japan the upper house is more limited than the lower one (as it should also be in the United States).

The reason that the government is being sued is because according to the Japanese Constitution a vote-weight disparity over 4.77 is illegal.

What is a vote-weight disparity? A vote-weight disparity is exactly that – a disparity or difference in the weight of votes from different people in different areas.

Let’s say that there exists somewhere a vote-weight disparity of 5. That means that in some location in Japan one person’s vote would carry 5 times more weight than that of a person in another area.

This occurs because the districting lines which determine boundaries for seats for the upper-house cover areas which may be of very high or very low population density. If it is an area of very low population density then one person’s vote in that area may have significantly more “weight” than that of a person in a densely populated area.

But exactly how and why is vote-weight disparity wrong and illegal? Simple – it is based on the principle that in a constitutional democracy there must be proportional representation. You cannot have one person represented by 5 members of a governing body while another person is respresented by only 1. But that, in essence, is what a vote-weight disparity of 5 translates into. It means that some people somewhere’s votes give them more power in the representative democratic government than other people.

On the face of it this is simply wrong and a total contradiction of basic principles of democracy. And in Japan its part of the Constitution.

But in the United States its not. And this is fucked. It is totally fucked. It is a serious problem. I entitled this post “Illegal Elections in the United States” but, quite unfortunately, they are not illegal in the United States although they very well should be.

This is a very serious problem with the system of government in the United States and must be immediately change. The very design of the US Senate which bases its seats upon states rather than population, is fundamentally and critically flawed.

It should be possible to challenge an election in the courts in America as is happening now in Japan (and has happened in the past with victories for the plaintiffs).