Labor Party voters head to ballot boxes to select list of candidates

Registered Labor Party members are heading to the ballot boxes on Tuesday to select the slate of candidates that will run jointly with Tzipi Livni's Hatnua faction in the upcoming Knesset elections.Voting booths opened at 10:00 a.m. local time in Israel. The voting stations will close at 10:00 p.m. The final results of the vote will be announced on Wednesday.Thirty-six candidates will face off in Tuesday’s Labor Party primary, but all eyes will be on MK Shelly Yacimovich, to see whether she will win the third slot on the list after her successor as Labor leader, Isaac Herzog, and his running mate, Hatnua head Tzipi Livni.Labor’s 48,904 members will be eligible to vote in 400 polling stations in 76 locations around the country. Yacimovich, who has never been a minister, said she hopes to earn a top portfolio in the next government by performing well in the primary. Candidates who have a chance of beating her include MKs Eitan Cabel, Erel Margalit and Merav Michaeli.Candidates have denied reports that they have made a political deal to block Yacimovich.Cabel even asked his supporters to place Yacimovich higher and give him the third slot.Yacimovich took the rare step of asking her supporters on social media Monday to stop sending her money, because she hit the maximum amount for donations permitted by law.She received NIS 274,000 in contributions from 956 donors in 217 communities across the country.“I initiated the Obama model of small donations in Israel in 2009 and it has proven itself,” she wrote on her Facebook page.Unlike Likud, which has only two women among its top 24 candidates, Labor has four slots reserved for women among its top 20. Besides Yacimovich and Michaeli, MK Stav Shaffir is expected to win one of them.