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X crossed off way we vote
SO Israelis are going to the polls on January 28 to elect
120 members of the Knesset.
They will be voting under a system quite unlike that in Britain
as we do not put an X next our choice.
All ballots are printed in advance. Although the votes are
going to choose the members of the Knesset, the voter has
only to select one printed slip identifying the party of his
or her choice, insert it in an envelope and drop it in the
ballot box.
He/she will have a choice of many slips, each containing
the symbol of a political party, but not the names of any
individuals. The parties will have already chosen and announced
the names of their candidates, and the voters approve them,
en bloc, by party.
In the pre-election preparations, each party draws up its
list. The big fight in Likud and Labour centres around who
will head the list, and thereby become the candidate for Prime
Minister.
The big parties bravely list 120 names. If 50 per cent of
all votes are cast for Party A, the first 60 names on its
list become Knesset members. If only 10 percent of the vote
goes to that party, the first 12 names on the list are elected.
The pre-election choice within the party is marked by much
jockeying as candidates seek to get their names high, in realistic
places on the list.
For example, if pre-election polls or expectations are that
large party A may succeed in getting enough votes to warrant
election of the first 35 names on its list, the ambitious
candidates must assure that their names are within that 35
bracket.
The next few after that are marginal hopefuls and all the
rest are listed for prestige only, so that the individual
can tell his/her grandchildren that in the 2003 elections
he was an official, listed candidate for the Knesset.
In the meantime, the struggle is now going on within the
primaries of the large parties.
An innovation in the last two elections was the choice of
the Prime Minister by popular vote, so that the voters had
two envelopes to drop into the ballot box, one for their party
and the other for the Premier. The system caused difficulties
and has been discarded.
Now, under the system which had been in effect previously,
the Prime Minister will be chosen by the Knesset after the
120 members have been seated.
The head of the leading party is requested by the President
of the State to present the Knesset with his proposals for
the government cabinet.
Since it is highly unlikely that any party will have a majority,
the individual named will invite other parties to join in
a coalition so as to assure a comfortable stability.
This is done by offering such parties cabinet posts in return
for their support. This involves difficult and sometimes protracted
negotiations with a number of the smaller parties.
Today there are more than four and a half million eligible
voters, about 20 per cent of them Arabs.
A proposal that all Israelis living abroad, who have chosen
to retain their citizenship should also be permitted to vote,
has not yet been approved by the Knesset and will not be in
effect this year.
Had it been passed, it would have qualified tens of thousands
of additional voters.
Under the law, it is relatively easy to register as a party.
All it requires is presentation of an application with 100
signatures, text of the party platform and other organisational
documents, and payment of £10,000.
At the moment there are no less than 59 parties registered,
though to judge from the experience of previous years, there
could be about 25 or 30 which will undertake the heavy financial
burden of campaigning for voter support.
Since a party needs to attain only one and a half per cent
of all the votes cast to qualify for a seat in the Knesset,
the end result may be a Knesset composed of anywhere from
12 to 15 parties.
Proposal has often been made to raise that margin to five
per cent or more, to eliminate the multiplicity of small parties,
but that has not yet been approved.
Even the big parties have shied away from urging the change,
lest they antagonise small parties whose votes and support
they may need to build their coalition.
On election day the polls close at 10pm and the manual count
of the ballots begins.
Email
him at urigeller@compuserve.com
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