Latest / Boots on the Ground / Israeli Elections Explained: How Your Vote Becomes a Government ep 46

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Israeli Elections Explained: How Your Vote Becomes a Government ep 46 · Boots on the Ground

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of Boots on the Ground, where we discuss Israel's wars, politics, and identity.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: In this week's episode, we are going to be focusing on the politics, how we cast votes, how we count our votes, how we form governments, a basic Civics 101 class for all of our listeners.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: If we have time at the end, I will run into a quick rundown and synopsis of all the parties running, starting from the right, moving to the left on that spectrum of right-left politics that we so love here in Israel.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, Sean cannot join me this week, so you have me all to yourselves.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Before we start, as always, I want to say thank you to our partners here at the Jerusalem Media Group and our sponsors, BeTheirIsrael.com.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: For all your events in Israel, BeTheirIsrael.com provides live streaming services so all your families and friends around the world can join you virtually.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And remember to like, share, and subscribe so we can keep providing more of this great content to you in Israel.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's get straight into it.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: So let's start off with who can vote, how we vote, and where we vote.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: In Israel, any Israeli citizen who's both a le or a legal immigrant over the age of 18 as of September 27th has been entered into the voter rolls of Israel.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us will receive a little postcard in the mail that tells you the address and the number of your polling station.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: If not, we'll put a link in the show notes to a website where you can easily check where your polling station is.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: It may be that if you've changed your address more recently with the Ministry of Interior, that your address change was not registered with the voting registry, and you might have to still go back to your old address in order to vote.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Voting takes place only at your registered polling station, unless you're currently a soldier in the army, a foreign diplomat serving abroad, or other very, very unique and very minimal exceptions where you vote at whatever the station closest to you or at a traveling polling station brought to your army base, in which case you vote in what's called a double envelope, and your double envelope ends up making its way back to your original polling station.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: In order to vote, you arrive at your polling station, you show an ID, a photo ID of who you are, normally your national ID card, and you're handed a blue envelope.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: You walk behind a palgod, a blue boot wall, where you have little ptakim, little white slips of paper with the letters and the names of every single eligible party on them.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: You pick one piece of paper, you put it in your envelope, you drop it in your polling box, and you walk out.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now make sure you put only one piece of paper in.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you have two even from the same party, it's not a valid vote.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you have two from different parties, it's very funny for everybody, but it's not a valid vote.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you make your own piece of paper, it's also not a valid vote and will not be counted.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, the committee that's sitting, the polling station committee, which is made up of one neutral member appointed by the Israel Elections Committee and two observers, one appointed by the sitting coalition and one appointed by the sitting opposition.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: There may be other observers as well from other organizations or other parties that decide to send more observers than the minimal requirement.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: They then open up the ballot box and they count all of the envelopes inside to make sure the number of valid votes correlates directly with the number of valid voters that voted that day.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: After that's been verified, they then open up all the envelopes and they count each piece of paper and which party it represents.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: That protocol is then transmitted digitally to the Central Elections Committee here in Jerusalem, while the box itself with all of the materials inside of it is also transported under police protection directly back to the Central Elections Committee here in Jerusalem, where they are then counted a second time.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes in very close races, they're counted a third and fourth time as well.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: The counting is done by hand, and most of it is videotaped for evidence for future and the purpose.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Our elections here, while people I'm sure are going to start questioning them, our elections in Israel are very secure, they're very safe, and they're very valid.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: The results are very valid as well and cannot be argued with.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: They represent what the nation of Israel wants for this future.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: All Israelis over 18, Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Jerusalem are all legally capable and welcome to vote.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: No one's getting in their way, no one's stopping them.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: As far as I'm aware, there's never even been protests against people voting in this country as there have in others.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: After that happens, we now get into how we figure out the proportional representation of each party in the Knesset.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: The Knesset is made up of 120 seats, makes up the national legislative body of the state of Israel.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And unlike in other countries where there's direct elections for the executive branch, the executive branch in Israel is an outcropping of the legislative branch.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we as the people elect the legislative branch.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: The legislative branch then agrees to coalesce around a picked executive branch.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: So first what happens is the total number of votes make up the total number of valid votes, and that defines the key for determining how many mandates each party gets.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: In past elections, it's been around 40,000 to 50,000 votes.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: In this election, we're assuming there's going to be very high voter turnout, which means there'll be a very high number of total votes, which will make the each seat worth between 50 to 60,000 votes.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I'm extrapolating and I'm I'm trying to prophesize for the future.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: If no one shows up to vote, then each seat will be worth less votes.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: In Israel, we have a minimal vote threshold where a party that doesn't receive a minimum of 3.25% of the vote does not qualify to sit in the Knesset.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Why 3.25 and not 3.2?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: I still haven't figured that one out.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've asked many people and I have not received a good explanation.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: But it means it's 3 plus a little bit for seats, which means legally you need a bare minimum of four seats to get enter the Knesset.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Once all the votes are counted and we now know who hasn't crossed that minimal threshold of 3.25, those votes are set aside and subtracted from the total number of votes percent.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: At that point, the seats, the mandates, are divided up by all the different parties that cross the threshold.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you start getting an initial understanding of what the Knesset's going to look like.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: The total and exact number can take usually another one to two days with small adjustments along the way.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because of what we spoke about, those double envelope votes.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: So all the votes that came from abroad, from diplomats stationed abroad, from soldiers stationed abroad, and from soldiers on army bases, those double envelopes go directly back to the Central Elections Committee and can sometimes take an extra day to get there.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: The first envelope tells you to which ballot that envelope belongs and who and who the voter is, that first envelope.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: They go back now and they check on the original protocol that that person didn't already vote in person at his correct polling place.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: They then open the envelope and they add it to the pile.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And his vote then gets added into the total from that polling station, which is why we see sometimes a day or two after an election, slight adjustments are made of how many seats exactly each party gets.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: About a week after an election, the president has already started speaking with the heads of all the different parties and receiving recommendations of who they think the prime minister could or should be.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: The question is who can get 61 votes in the Knesset or the majority to vote to create the Prime Minister and the Executive Branch.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: After the president has sat with the heads of every single party, he then gives the mandate, the initial mandate to form a government, to who he believes has the greatest chance of forming a government.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: It is not always necessarily the head of the largest party, as we've seen in recent history with Neftali Bennett, as we've seen in governments before that.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's the second largest party, and sometimes it's a tiny party like Bennett had with six seats.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever has the highest likelihood of getting a 61-seat majority gets the initial mandate.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: That person then takes his mandate and goes to the Knesset and starts to try and get them to vote on forming a government.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: How we form a government is usually a combination of giving out different ministries to the different members of this future coalition.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's also chairmen of different Knesset committee positions, seats on committees, all of the political makeup of how our government is run is decided in advance.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: They get a majority of people saying, okay, we're we're comfortable with this constitutional create this constitution of a government, this creation of a government, and we're voting in favor of it.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: If the person given the initial mandate is unable to form a government within the time allotted to him, approximately two to three weeks, the president then has a second round where he speaks with all the heads of the parties again, and he hands a second chance to either the same or a different member of the Knesset to try and form a ruling coalition.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: If that attempt also fails, we then go back to another round of elections approximately within 90 days.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we then have a second round of elections again, and now this time everyone tries to show why they deserve a higher percentage of your vote or why someone else doesn't.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: That has happened in recent history in the past, where we had multiple rounds of elections because no one was capable of forming a government until Naftali Bennett created the change government, which brought together a slightly unlikely group of coalition partners to create also what was then a very short-lived government before it fell and we went back into elections again.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now that we spoke about who votes, how we vote, and how it all comes together to create a government, let's talk about quickly the different parties running for the Knesset.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: There are about 38 different parties running for the Knesset.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: I will not get to all of them.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Many of them are running more as, and I told you so, they'll get a few hundred votes if they're lucky.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not worth talking about.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: There are one or two outliers that are extremely fun to look at.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's King Sharshar, for example, who walks around with a big crown on his head and a cape.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: He's a businessman who gives out lots of charity.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's more of a gimmick than an actual, you know, vote, but go him.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: While I don't necessarily like the left-right spectrum that we use here in Israeli politics because most parties are on both sides of it in different times, it's the best spectrum we have today, and it basically clearly reflects the current opposition and the current coalition.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: The current opposition being the left side of the spectrum, the current coalition being the right.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: If we start on the far left, we have what's now called the Demokratim, headed by a former general named Gayr Golan.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is the party that's made up of both Avoda, the former Labour Party, and the former Meritz party, which was all about secular coercion in Israel.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: They stand for territorial surrender, agreements instead of combat with our enemies, a much more socialist form of economy, and all left-wing politics.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: This polling shows them running around seven or eight seats.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see what happens.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Moving further to the right from them, moving along that spectrum, we then have both the Yaur Lapid Naftali Benet Biyachad Party and Ghadi Isenkotziashal Party.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: I personally can't tell you too much of what the difference is between them.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't, I've I've read both their platforms and don't see much of a difference.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Ya'ulapid and Naftali Benet, two former prime ministers, created a party together that's supposed to represent the unity of the nation, where in reality it represents uniformity of thought.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Again, they're more about acquiescence and appeasement of our enemies, more socialist economics, and again secular coercion and basically being anti-Kharedi.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Ghadi Isencot's party Yashal, or straight or honest, is also, for what I'm saying, is more of the same of what Yari Lapid and Benes.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: I would like to point out that Mr.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Ghari Eisencott is a former chief of staff of the Israeli army, was the architect of what's called the Gidon Plan.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: The Gidon Plan closed multiple different divisions from the Tank Corps before the current war and released over a hundred thousand reservists from service.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: He's the architect of the small and smart plan for the Israeli army.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: One of the people that led directly to the failures of October 7th was him with his with uh Vigd Lieberman, who was the defense minister at the time, and his number two, who was Yar Golan, was the deputy chief of staff.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: They created what was called the Gudon Plan, which minimized the size and the ability to fight wars from our army, and instead of depending on manpower and force, depended on technology.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Moving on, we then have a Vigdor Lieberman with Israel Bekhtinu, Israel is our home party, which has classically been the home for the Russian immigrant or uh community.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: He's been very hawkish when it comes to the military and how we should root our enemies, but again joined the Bennett-led left-wing government that I spoke about.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: He is vehemently anti-Nitanyahu in his stance on politics, and he's also extraordinarily anti-Kharim and anti-religious control over any capacity in the country.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: His platform stands for the most part on those principles.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: We then move over to the Likud, which is Netanyahu's party, set up mainly as a centrist right-wing liberal party.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's run by Netanyahu and his same people.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's updated his list a little bit, but it's more of the same from the Likud.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think any of my voters need me to expand on who or what the Likud is.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: We then have Bitsal Smotovich, who's the head of the religious Zionist Party, who's actually added for the first time a few new faces, mainly coming out of this war.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Itamar Itam, as a former battalion commander in the reserve duty, who got reserves, who got injured at the beginning of the war, a great man.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's very successful in expanding settle, expanding living in Judea and Samaria, expanded the roads, and he's created many, many situations in Udavis Shomron and Judea and Samaria that has strengthened Israel's hold over the land.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, he's basically mortgaged Israel's economy for the future in the way in which he's run this war.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: I will point out that for the first six months of the war, as the current minister of treasury, he sat out of the war cabinet and allowed his political opposition to run the war for the first six months, while the population that voted for him has the highest percentage of serving in the reserves and has paid the highest price for the mistreatment and mismanagement of the war for the first six months.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's done great things both in the economy, not enough, in my opinion.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Moving on from there, we have Ben we have Itamar Ben Gvir for the Jewish Power Party.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Very important to note on his list.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: He has Ishai Fleischer, who's a very outspoken voice in the Anglo world as a spokesperson for Hevron, who is all about more militants.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's been very successful in easing the restrictions on gun licensing in Israel.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's lowered the standard to the bare minimum required for the prisoners in Israel, for terrorist prisoners in Israel that we've captured.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he's he's very rambunctious and is very outspoken and does not care about being politically correct in the media.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Those are all the parties that are currently represented in Israel's Knesset.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: In addition to them, there's two interesting parties that have joined the Frey that have very high likelihoods of joining the next Knesset.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's first a conglomeration of three parties, which is the Milwimnikim, the Kalkalanim, and Oz, which is the reservists, the economics, and the Oz factions, all joined together into a technical block, which is Yuaz Hendel, Yaon Zalicha, and Enat Wulf.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: They represent three distinct ideas.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: One is the reservists.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how every reservist is in his pocket necessarily.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: His platform says he will not join a right wing or a left-wing government, but only a broad government that forces Kharidim into the army and changes the way that payments are made to reservists.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yaron Zaliha, who's been a very outspoken critic of the Israeli economic minute, of the Israeli treasury and how the economics are run, and has many plans to bring Israel into an even greater free market and capitalist society.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And a not Wolf, who was originally a very large part of the Oslo Accords, who has since done chuva, as we'll say, and recognized that she was wrong, and is now running her own party together.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's one coalition of parties to create one technical block that's running together.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: The other one is Amcha Israel, the party in which I'm affiliated with, headed by the former Brigadier General Ofer Winter.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Amcha Israel is the list, we will go into it in another episode, that I'm deeply associated with and helping run in this election.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm clearly biased on everybody else.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: We are 100% a right-wing nationalist party representing victory, haqhla'ah instead of haqhlaa, so victory instead of appeasement for our enemies.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Reshifting the balance between Israeli the way the Israeli society treats and supports the reserving public, the reservists and the national service members in the country.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Free market economics, while lowering regulation, while recognizing we are still a Jewish country.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: We have a requirement and a moral debt to take care of the weaker members of our society together.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: In addition, we include the Christian Arabs on our list, residents of Jain Samar, along with veteran residents of the rest of the country.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: We have the highest ranking popping members who are Olim on the list and recognize that Aliyah is no longer, Israel is no longer necessarily a place of refuge, but Aliyah should be viewed as talent acquisition for the state of Israel.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're preparing for a big wave of Aliyah from the West as anti-Semitism rises, and we need to reshape Israel to reflect it that it's not a place necessarily to run to because you're running away from a problem, but your home in which you need to come here for a problem.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to go into many more things about the party in future episodes as I bring members of the list on to the show.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And due the time constraints we have, I'd like to end on this note.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to encourage everyone who's legally able to go out and vote to come out on October 27th and vote for whichever party speaks to you the most.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: While of course I prefer you vote for the party I'm working with and Amcha Israel.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: You can vote however your conscience is, and no one will be angry at you, and we will still appreciate you listening here.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: October 27th, Israel Election Day.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you can't vote, say your prayer for the future of Israel and hope that the outcome of the elections will bring Israel into a stronger, safer, and more fruitful future.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: From here in Jerusalem to you at home, I'm Israel Chai.