Japanese voting system excluding disabled patients unconstitutional

Thursday, 28-Nov-2002 5:00AM PST Story from AFP
Copyright 2002 by Agence France-Presse

TOKYO, Nov 28 (AFP) - A Japanese court on Thursday ruled three sufferers of Lou Gehrig's disease were unfairly prevented from voting but rejected their claim for damages, saying the electoral law was not designed to deprive them of their rights.

The plaintiffs argued their disease, formally known as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), prevented them from being able to write on postal ballots and that they would have put their lives at risk if they were to attempt to go to the ballot box to cast their vote in person.

ALS is a progressively degenerative disease causing severe muscle wasting and paralysis leading to death in about three years. It was named after Lou Gehrig, a famous US baseball player who succumbed to the disease in 1941.

The law stipulates that a voter can only cast a vote by writing in the name of the favoured candidate or option by hand and prohibits a proxy from writing on the ballot sheet in order to prevent fraud.

Tokyo District Court judge Takahisa Fukuda said while the current system was unconstitutional, he rejected the plaintiffs' call for 2.7 million yen (22, 000 dollar) in compensation because there was no intent to deprive them of their voting rights.

"I must say that the fact that a voting system has not been devised to enable the plaintiffs to exercise their right to vote is unconstitutional," said Fukuda.

"(But) It is not clear if there were those like the plaintiffs who could not exercise their rights at the time the law was made."

"I do not accept that lawmakers were generally conscious that there were such people or that their actions would violate the constitution," he said.

Susumu Murakoshi, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs -- one of whom has died since the case was filed -- said while he was disappointed that compensation was rejected, he welcomed the judge's acknowledgment the current system was unfair.

The plaintiffs' lawyers would relay the ruling to every national lawmaker and urge a change in the law, he added.

Tokyo would consider how to proceed to ensure that everyone entitled to vote could do so, the government's top spokesman, said later at a regular press conference.

"We must enable people to vote regardless of their circumstances. We take it upon ourselves as an important task to secure the opportunity to vote for all. We wish to study how to take this forward," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda.

An appeal would be lodged if appropriate measures were not taken, the lawyer Murakoshi said, according to Jiji Press news agency.

A spokeswoman for the Japan Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association said there are about 6,000 ALS patients nationwide, with around 2,500 of them bedridden and dependent on artificial respirators.

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