For those of you who are not on top of your Israeli politics, this week Israel held elections for the 19th Knesset (Parliament). For both of us, this was a very exciting event. Matt was feeling particularly Zionistic. I think his exact quote was, “I can feel the Zionism pumping through my veins!” I was just excited to vote, as this was the first time in my life I voted in “real time.” Since I have been of legal voting age, I have never lived in the US during an election year – I was either studying in Canada or Israel – and have only voted absentee.
Voting in Israel, however, is very different than voting in the US (or any other country for that matter) in many different ways. Firstly, the logistics of voting are quite unique. Left over from the early years of statehood, one votes in Israel by slipping a small piece of paper with a letter on it representing the party you wish to vote for in an envelope and then slipping the envelope in a box called a קלפי, kalpi. The trick is knowing which letters represent which party because, more likely than not, they do not have anything to do with the party name. For example, the Labor Party (in Hebrew: עבודה) uses the letters "אמת" on their slip of paper, the Torah Judaism Party (in Hebrew: יהדות התורה) uses the letter "ג" on their slip, Tzipi Livni's new party, HaTnuah (התנועה) used the letters "צפ", so on and so forth, with each party represented by a seemingly arbitrary array of letters. The history behind this is quite fascinating. In the first years of statehood, much of Israel’s population was made up of immigrants, many of whom were illiterate in Hebrew. To ease the voting process, each party was assigned a letter starting with "א" then "ב" and so on (this is like assigning parties “a”, “b” etc.) so that citizens who could not read could simply find the letter of their party and vote. Over the years parties have merged (causing multi-lettered slips) and many many new partied have formed (there were over 30 parties running in this election) each getting assigned a new letter or combination of letters. The result of all of this looks makes the voting booth look like this:
And here we are putting our sealed envelopes in the kalpi - the moment of truth! As they say here: מי שמצביע משפיע / Mi sh'matzbia mashpia / Whoever votes, influences (it sounds better in Hebrew because it rhymes).
Figuring out your voting "strategy" highlights another major difference in voting in Israel - the fact you need a strategy to vote. Unlike in any election we've been eligible to vote in before, when voting here you're not necessarily trying to vote for the "winner" (also known as the Prime Minister). I'm not about to get into all the details of how the Israeli parliamentary system works (it's complicated, you can Google it), but suffice it to say that the government works on a proportional representational system, so one may decide to vote for a party that has no chance of getting the Prime Minister-ship, but is likely to represent their views as part of the ruling coalition. Or one may choose to vote for a party that is likely to head the opposition Or one may vote for a small party with a very specific agenda, that hopefully has a chance of crossing the threshold to get seats, so that their specific interest can be represented in the government (for example: the Pirate Party, the Anti-Pornography Party and the Green Leaf Party). This last option often leads to wasted votes. If this all confused you, it's ok, you're in good company. Like many Israelis, we weren't 100% sure who were voting for until the last minute, literally.
The last thing that struck us as odd about election season here in Israel is that it is completely PC to ask people who they are voting/ voted for. While your actual ballot is cast secretly, your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and bus driver do not believe this information is private in any way. The day after elections we took the afternoon off to go to the Train Museum in Haifa (which, if you like trains and/or Israeli history, is a pretty cool place). When buying our tickets, we asked the man at the ticket counter if there was a special price for new olim (immigrants), which most museums in Haifa have (one of the fun perks). While he sadly informed us that they did not, our question did perk his interest in us. "Where are you from?" he asked. "The United States," we replied. Which he responded to by asking, "Oh, did you vote yesterday? Who did you vote for?" At first we were slightly uncomfortable being asked by strangers about our voting tendencies, but found that no one really judged us and it is just a normal topic of conversation here.
If you want to know who we voted for, you can email us privately. :)
Wishing you all a great week,
Stef and Matt
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