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Dateline Jerusalem — It is election time again for Israel on Tuesday.
This time it is for Prime Minister, which is equivalent to the President in the U.S. But
there is also a President of Israel, which is sort of a figurehead position with some
powers.
Campaigning began again after a short pause because of the Israel-Gaza war. All
Citizens, whether Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, Christians, Bedouins, Druze or whatever
other religious, ethnic or other affiliation, have the freedom to vote.
The voting is for party, not person. Each party has already voted within its respective
membership and determined who will represent their party. Depending on the number
of votes the party gets, that will determine the number of people from that party who will
get a seat in the Knesset, the Israeli legislature.
Trying to Understand the System
Each party has a platform, and for some of the smaller parties, the platform could be one
issue. For example, there is a pensioner's party, there is a party for those advocating marijuana,
a party for ultra-orthodox, a party for anti-religious, a party for environmentalists,
parties from one end of the political spectrum to the other — even a couple of Arab parties
that advocate the destruction of Israel!
The voting is direct, no electoral college.
Because there are so many parties, usually there is no majority. The government must be
formed out of a coalition of parties. This is where the fun begins. The major parties make
all sorts of promises to the smaller parties to get them to become part of their coalition
so that the government can function. When a party pulls out of the coalition, then the
system breaks down and elections occur again.
Everybody Welcome to Vote
Election day is supposed to be a national holiday.
That means everyone is supposed to get the day off, or at least part of the day, to vote.
My boss does not seem to know that. I am hesitant to tell him because any time I say
something to him he feels I am "challenging" his authority.
If you live in one city and work in another, when you show the bus driver your ID card
with your address, you can get free transportation by bus to the polls.
Since there are no absentee ballots, planeloads of Israeli citizens fly back to Israel from
all over the world to vote. I know someone who is Israeli by birth but has lived in California
for the last 25 of his 28 years. He and his entire family were considering taking a trip to
Israel to exercise their right to vote since this election is one of great importance.
There is no ballot sheet.
There are no boxes to check off or chads to punch.
After checking in at the polling station and being given an envelope, the voter steps into
the voting booth and chooses a piece of paper from a tray of many papers, which are not
much larger than a post-it note.
Each note has the letter or letters of the particular party on it, or sometimes a message or other
identifying information. The voter chooses a paper from the tray and then places that paper in the
envelope. Unfortunately, sometimes there are no papers for the party you want because
many people used them up, or other voters don't want your vote to cancel theirs so they "steal"
the papers that represent competition to their chosen party.
If that happens, then the voter can taken an empty note and write in the party or letter of his choice.
Tonight I went to the home of an attorney who had a speaker representing one of the parties. It was
supposed to be in English, but since everyone there spoke Hebrew except for two friends and me,
the talk was in Hebrew. At the end, there was a summary in English.
Luckily, my friends knew a little Hebrew. They were able to help me understand.
The speaker had quite an impressive background, but was No. 7 or 8 on his party's list.
That means more than likely he will get a seat in the Knesset, but whether he has any clout
is another story.
The strangest thing of all was when he told one of the people in the audience that if they
wanted a specific other party to win, they should vote for his party rather than for the specific other party.
He then spoke of the coalitions forming for the government. To me it makes no sense because
it dilutes the vote for the larger party. Israeli politics is still new to me. I guess being confused
is par for the course for me, but I think even some of the oldtimers didn't understand this concept, either.
L'hitraot. Shachar
Shachar is the Hebrew name of a California-based attorney and former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy who moved to Israel last year.
