The Israeli Airline Pilots Association made an urgent appeal to the chairman of the Central Elections Committee for the 26th Knesset, Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, demanding a dedicated voting arrangement for aircrews abroad on Election Day due to their work. According to the appeal, signed by the association's chairman, Capt. Hagay Meyer, pilots, flight attendants, flight security guards, technical personnel, and maintenance staff assigned to flights on Election Day, or who depart early in the election week and do not return in time, are effectively disenfranchised.
Polling station at Ben-Gurion Airport and double envelopes
The immediate remedy requested by the association is to establish a dedicated polling station at Ben-Gurion Airport on Election Day. Eligible crew members could vote using double envelopes before departing on a flight or upon returning. Under the proposed framework, airlines would submit approved flight schedules in advance, eligibility would be verified beforehand, and a dedicated registry would prevent double voting at standard polling stations. For crew members departing early in the election week who are not expected to return in time, the association requests early voting or another legal alternative.
The association stressed that this is not a request to expand voting rights to Israelis abroad in general, but a targeted arrangement for a closed, defined group whose identity can be verified. The appeal added that while crew members can request not to work on Election Day, they are not abroad for leisure. According to the association, their absence stems from flight schedules and a vital public duty, and choosing to serve passengers on a public holiday should not cost them their right to vote. The appeal also noted that many crew members serve in the reserves, with some dispatched to distant missions, including in Iran and Lebanon.
One sailor versus aircrews
In the appeal, the association noted that Israeli law already provides special voting arrangements for soldiers, police officers, sailors, employees of Israeli foreign missions, hospitalized patients, people with mobility disabilities, and Central Elections Committee workers. Prison inmates also vote at polling stations set up in prisons. The comparison to sailors is particularly striking: According to the association, as of today, only a single sailor in Israel is eligible for the special voting arrangement. "If it were deemed appropriate to establish a dedicated mechanism for an extremely small group of sailors," the appeal stated, "a fortiori, a parallel arrangement must be completed" for aircrews.
According to the association, the solution is not new. A bill intended to formalize such an arrangement was previously advanced in the Knesset, receiving support from the Central Elections Committee, the Civil Aviation Authority, and the Israel Airports Authority. However, the legislative process was never completed, and therefore, the association argued, the problem is not a lack of a solution, but a lack of implementation. Until legislation is finalized, the association requested that the committee exercise its existing authority to set up a dedicated polling station as early as the upcoming elections.
The association also recalled that the logistical solution has been tested in the past. During the elections for the 24th Knesset in March 2021, the Central Elections Committee set up polling stations at Ben-Gurion Airport for passengers returning from abroad on Election Day who were required to quarantine due to the coronavirus, allowing them to vote immediately upon landing.