TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Lawyers filed lawsuits at high courts across Japan on Monday, seeking to nullify the results and conduct a rerun of the previous day's general election, arguing that disparities in the weight of votes violated the principle of equality under the Constitution.

Boundary changes and a redistribution of single-seat constituencies for the latest House of Representatives election resulted in the maximum vote weight disparity falling slightly from the previous lower house election in 2021 to 2.06-fold.

A revised law enacted in 2022 added 10 single-seat electoral districts to five prefectures and cut one each from 10 prefectures, while redrawing boundaries in another 10 prefectures, affecting a total of 140 constituencies.

The lawyers filed the lawsuits with 14 high courts and their branches on Monday, challenging all of the 289 single-seat electoral district results.

The country has taken steps to rectify the situation since the Supreme Court ruled the vote weight disparities of over 2.0-fold seen in the 2009, 2012 and 2014 lower houses elections were in a "state of unconstitutionality." It has never nullified election results.

The top court said the maximum disparity of 2.08-fold in the 2021 lower house election was constitutional as parliament had made efforts to redress differences in the weight of votes.

According to government data, Hokkaido's No. 3 district had the highest number of eligible voters at 461,457 and Tottori Prefecture's No. 1 district the lowest with 224,060 voters as of Oct. 14.