The Elections: Part One

Dateline: Jerusalem, March 28, 2006

Today is Election Day here in Israel. Thus concludes one of the more lackluster but no less significant elections in Israel’s brief history. Many important issues are at stake today, most importantly the immediate future of disengagement from the Palestinians and the direction of the Israeli socio-economic policies for the next few years. Though people outside of Israel here more about the former issue, the latter is no less important in a society wherein fully one-third of all children live under the official poverty level and pensioners find themselves facing higher costs with diminishing resources. Here at home, all the parties have had to address these issues vital to Israel’s existence and well-being but a few parties have arisen to focus attention most directly on particular concerns. Among the 31 (yes, I said 31) parties on the voting list, there is a pensioners’ party whose raison d’être is to lobby on behalf of pensioners’ rights—surprisingly, some pollsters predict that this party has a chance of meeting the 2% threshold of the electorate necessary to win a seat in the 120-seat Knesset. The Labor Party under its new leader, Amir Peretz, has positioned itself as the champion of the socially and economically downtrodden. And, of course, all the contending parties present themselves as the best choice to insure Israel’s security, especially as we face the threat of a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

You would think that these critical issues would drive the electorate to the polls en masse. In past elections Israeli’s have turned out to vote in astounding numbers, hovering around 80% of the eligible voters who exercised their mandate. These numbers dipped recently in the 2003 election when only 67.8% of the electorate cast a ballot. This number is still impressive when you consider that in the 2000 US presidential election only 49.3% of American voters went to the polls. Still, election-watchers predict that today’s turnout will be even smaller than the 2003 election. Many Israelis either believe that a Kadimah victory is a sure thing and they are apathetic or they are completely disillusioned by the state of the polity and the direction of their government and will sit home in protest. We will know more tonight when the polls close at 10:00 PM Israel time. By tomorrow morning we will know which parties benefited most from today’s vote.

What, me worry? Wendy emerges from the voting booth with ballot in hand ready to place it in the ballot box.

At least I know of two enthusiastic voters today. Wendy and I cast our votes this morning. It was an incredibly simple procedure, especially when compared to the American (i.e. California) system. Instead of receiving a voters’ booklet filled with candidates’ statements, propositions and measures, we were mailed a little card with the number and location of our polling station. All that we needed to know in advance was which party we planned to support with our vote. Here you mark your ballot for neither candidate nor issue, in fact, you do not mark a ballot at all.

According to the Israeli electoral system, each voter casts a vote for a party (not a specific candidate). You enter a room with a table at which sit the PAID election workers with representatives of each party somewhere about. Once you verify your qualifications to vote by presenting your identity card and being dutifully checked off the list by the elections official, you are handed an opaque blue envelope and instructed to enter the voting booth. Inside you find a multi-compartment box. In each compartment there is a small piece of paper—one for each of the 31 eligible parties plus a stack of blank ballots. On each ballot is printed the 1-3 lettered “logo” of the party plus it name in small print below. This is to insure that even the illiterate can exercise their right to vote just by memorizing a few letters (though this might give the advantage to those parties whose logo is but a single letter!). Finding your party’s scrip in the box, you then place it in the envelope (only one per envelope, any more and your vote is disqualified), and seal it (I hope I don’t develop “voter’s flu”). After emerging from the voting booth you put your ballot into the blue cardboard box that serves as the receptacle of this sacred census, much as the box that collected the half-shekel that tallied the strength of our biblical forebears. And that’s it, you’ve voted!

The whole process takes less than a minute, therefore there are no long lines or interminable wait as that damnable idiot before you reads every candidate’s name and the synopsis of each ballot measure because s-he did not read their voters’ booklet in advance of entering the voting booth. So, which system is superior? That answer is beyond the purview of this brief account of our initiation to being Israeli voters. I’ll leave that up to you to decide. But, of this I am sure, today we participated in an exercise of pure democracy as experienced in precious few nations today, most particularly in this part of the world. Part two will follow tomorrow as I report on the results of today’s voting.

Until then, shalom from Jerusalem.