Should Americans envy Israeli elections? - Analysis
If blood ends up getting spilled, the red, white and blue will undoubtedly covet how ballots are cast by the blue and white without the red
By GIL HOFFMANVoting in Israel works a lot differently than voting in the US(photo credit: CORINNA KERN/REUTERS AND REUTERS/JONATHAN DRAKE)
Israelis like to boast that they are the Start-Up Nation.But when they go to vote every Election Day, they remember that they are also a historic nation that goes back 3,000 years, because their method of voting has not really changed since then.No computers, no technology, no machines. The votes are pieces of paper counted by human beings. It is the ultimate low-tech.It is important to keep in mind that when Israelis watched Americans vote on Tuesday, an enormous mess was expected afterward. The votes were to be counted and most states projected, but some could be too close to call due to nearly 100,000,000 early voters, inevitable lawsuits and perhaps even rioting.Prof. Ofer Kenig, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy institute (IDI), said there are three reasons Israelis should be happy with their own voting system, compared to that of the United States.First of all, Israel is one state, not 50, so it has the same rules for all votes, not 50 different sets of complicated laws.Secondly, primitive ballots are easier to count by humans. Our ballots do not have lists of candidates and questions. Not only is there no computer involved, there is also no pen mark to interpret.Finally, there is no early voting in person, no postal voting, no drop-off voting and barely any absentee voting, and even that is conducted in official ways, not by regular mail.There are, of course, drawbacks to the Israeli system, most notably that if you happen to be abroad on Election Day, you cannot vote. But the coronavirus crisis helped resolve that problem by preventing most Israelis from going overseas.Could the coronavirus crisis make the next election in Israel much more complicated? What if the voting takes place at the peak of a third wave of COVID-19?
The Central Elections Committee (CEC) and IDI are preparing for that likely possibility. CEC director-general Orly Ades had an eight-hour meeting on Tuesday.Kenig suggested adding more special polling stations, hiring more vote counters and letting elderly and other at-risk voters cast ballots first. He cautioned against taking drastic steps, adding that in the worst-case scenario, Israel could double the amount of double ballots that have special voting procedures.No matter how many steps were taken to increase voter turnout in the US, even in what is seen as a fateful election, America is not expected to come anywhere close to the 71% turnout Israel enjoyed in its third election in under a year in March.For all those reasons, Americans could envy Israelis when they voted on their Election Day. If the election gets out of hand, degenerates into rioting and violence and no accepted victor is declared for weeks, Americans will have more reasons to be jealous.If blood ends up getting spilled, the red, white and blue will undoubtedly covet how ballots are cast by the blue and white without the red.
