Olmert votes at empty Jerusalem polling station

'We'll see you again,' he tells reporters.

By ETGAR LEFKOVITS
Closing a circle, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert voted Wednesday at a Jerusalem polling station for his own replacement in the Kadima Party primaries, but suggested he was not stepping down just yet. "We'll see you again," Olmert told reporters on his way out of the empty polling station in Pisgat Ze'ev. The premier, who has previously pledged to leave office as soon as his replacement is chosen by the party, refused to say who he had voted for in the internal party vote. The polling station, located in a community center in the outlying Jerusalem neighborhood, was packed with journalists and security personnel ahead of the premier's visit. But the group of five election personnel and observers - as well as the handful of polling station ushers stationed at the site - sat listlessly in the auditorium for over an hour at midday, during which not a single person entered came to vote. Four hours after polling stations had opened, only 65 of the 719 Kadima members registered to vote at the site had done so, an election observer said. The less-than-10 percent turnout on a torrid end-of-summer September day was seen as likely to benefit Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, who was polling a distant second behind the front-runner, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, but exit polls Wednesday night showed Livni winning the primary. If the winner of the internal party vote is unable to form a new government within the next month, Olmert could stay on as the head of a caretaker government for several months until general elections are held in early 2009, and a new government is formed. Earlier in the morning, one of the people who did vote, an Egged member, told election observers that he had been paid to vote for one of the candidates. The man was allowed to vote in the election, but the case was reported to the police, he said. Olmert himself, who has been forced out of office due to a series of corruption charges, walked into the polling station surrounded by his secret service detail shortly before 2 p.m. The polling station was plastered with pictures of his predecessor, Kadima Party founder Ariel Sharon, but none of Olmert himself. "Hello there," Olmert said before shaking hands with all five election personnel and observers seated at the table in the middle of the room, where he was provided with an envelope to cast his vote. After disappearing behind a voting booth, and stopping to pose for the horde of cameramen at the scene, Olmert was asked for whom he had voted. "A good vote," he said. Pressed, he urged Kadima's 74,000 registered party members to come out and vote, and make the primaries a success. "Goodbye," he waved to reporters on his way out. "We'll see you again."