Color War (Article# 97) 11/20/08

Well, the Israeli municipal elections are now a thing of the past. Having now experienced the whole process from beginning to end, I cannot believe how utterly sophomoric it is. From the posing and strutting of the candidates as if they are Peacocks looking for a Peahen to the 18th century manner in which votes are cast and tabulated (hanging chads have nothing on us), the democratic process is certainly approached in a much different way in our new home than in our old.

In the days running up to the election, the spin doctoring was at a maximum. “We are poised for victory!” is a cry that each mayoral campaign cried several times. In the last week of the campaign the incumbent mayor (who many wanted to throw out) released a new slogan….”vote for me or Bet Shemesh will become a Chareidi city”, a message clearly designed to frighten the Dati Leumi candidate’s supporters into unifying behind him. Cars with megaphones broadcast electioneering messages through the streets; posters and flyers appeared in mailboxes, on cars and all over the streetpoles and fences. Finally, the big day arrived.

We had been warned to expect a blizzard of campaign materials to hit the streets. Those warnings were insufficient. The streets looked as if it had snowed paper the night before. Papers were strewn EVERYWHERE with instructions on how to vote and for whom. It is apparently something that is commonplace here and is frowned upon by the people, but viewed as an important campaign tactic by the candidates.

In the USA I had once served as a poll volunteer for the NY Democratic Party (sorry). One of the organizations I worked with was supporting a specific local candidate and I had been asked to help on Election Day. I stood at the proscribed spot and very quietly passed out small placards asking for the voters’ support (I think our guy lost that day). This was nothing compared to a Bet Shemesh election worker.

Our daughter Chaya spent practically the entire Election Day electioneering for our candidate (Shalom Lerner) at the polls. Her entire grade was given the day off and assigned to various polling places throughout Bet Shemesh. They were given T-shirts to wear and then spent the day passing out ballot instructions, singing songs and cheers to the passers by as they went in to vote and at the very end, cleaning up some of the mess.

She told me afterward that the entire time it felt as if she was in a camp “Color War” with the various teams each cheering and shouting for attention and support. While there were definitely a few confrontations, on the whole she said that she enjoyed the festive atmosphere and had a tremendously fun time while doing it.

Before I clue you in on the results, I want to share the thought that bothered me throughout the campaigning. “WHY?” I do not understand the motivation behind all the commotion. Is it possible that the candidates believe that people are so stupid that they are going to walk out of their homes on election day, pick a piece of paper up off of the floor and declare “AHA – NOW I know who to vote for”? Or maybe they believe that harassing people and accosting them as they approach the voting area is the best way to snare those sneaky undecided voters?

Maybe they only do it because that is what the other guy is doing. After all, how would it look if the other candidates were having their victory motorcades and my candidate didn’t? Does he think he isn’t going to win? It is almost as if some candidate many years ago did all these things and ended up winning and this led to copycats and more copycats and now, they all do these things because “this is the way things are done.”

Maybe it really works? It just might be that the average Israeli DOES respond to such tactics and this is how elections are one here. I am, after all, still a foreign born oleh, with all my prejudices and attitudes that worked for me in the USA – so who’s to day I am right and they are wrong?

Goldie and I work in Yerushalayim, and we wanted to have the little kids see how voting is done, so we chose to vote at the end of the day. We had been provided with multiple sets of instructions; via email, phone call and paper blizzard on how to make sure our votes count. There are tons of rules.

As I noted last week, municipal elections are conducted on two levels. There is an election for the Mayor (who is usually also number one on his party’s city council list) and an election for parties to sit in the city council. Each voter is handed two envelopes (each one a different color), one for each election and goes into the voting area to vote.

When I say voting area what I mean is either a school desk or a table that has a posterboard 3 fold divider (similar to what your kids use for a display for their science projects in school) on the desk, behind which are the ballots. The ballots (color coded – 1 group for mayor the other for city council) are on the desk in wooden organizers that are clearly built to hold the ballots. The voter takes two papers, one with the name of his choice for mayor on it and the other with the party letter and party name of his choice for the city council, puts the papers in the appropriate envelope, seals the envelope and then drops the envelopes into the ballot box. At the end of the day, they rip open the envelopes and count the votes.

Simple, right? WRONG!!!

The ballots have to each be in PERFECT condition for them to be counted. A ballot that has been folded, torn, bent, written upon or has any other type of damage to it is invalid and therefore thrown out. This leads to a tremendous amount of ballot tampering. A supporter of one candidate enters the voting area to vote. While he is in there, he marks, slightly tears, bends or otherwise disqualifies a stack of the opponent’s ballots – but leaves them in the ballot tray. When the voters come to vote for the opponent, they unwittingly use these invalid ballots and their votes are then disqualified!

You don’t even need fraud. I am not sure if the ballot trays were all the same size. However, I do know that the slot holding the ballots for my choice for mayor was so small that I had a very hard time getting the paper out of the tray without bending it. Had I not known in advance that this was an issue I would certainly have invalidated my own vote.

Of course, by the time the elections are over the accusations of ballot tampering and voter fraud are made by the various supporters. (Finally, something that is the SAME as the USA). Interestingly, I am not aware of the campaigns or candidates themselves making accusations; the gentlemanly way the parties conducted the post election business was a pleasure to see.

Polls are open until 10 PM here, so the counting begins quite late in the day. Only the big cities have exit polling, so even though we knew what was going on in Yerushalayim and Tel Aviv right away, we went to bed without having an idea who won in Bet Shemesh. The whole process seems archaic.

Why is it that Israel, the country that is a major high tech innovator, the place where Instant Messaging was developed, the place where cellphone innovations happen every day, the place where the computing giants ALL have research and development facilities and major investments in product development as well, how is it that this country cannot figure out a way to make computer balloting an easy and efficient way to conduct an election? I just don’t get it – it should NOT be this hard.

So the municipal elections are finally over and now we have new elections to look forward to. We choose new leaders for our country (or maybe the same ones) in a few short months. They will each make passionate pleas for our support in making their vision of Israel’s future come true. I am sure that what we have witnessed so far will be dwarfed by comparison to a National election and am quite eagerly looking forward to seeing it all unfold (GO BIBI!!).

The results? The Chareidi candidate took 52% of the vote to claim an outright victory. Voter turnout was dismal – less than 50% of the residents cared to voice their opinion (turnout Israel wide was below 40% and the Attorney General bemoaned that fact on National TV in the middle of the elections).

I have serious concerns about the new mayor and city council (ultra religious parties won 9 of 19 seats – short of having an absolute majority by only 1 seat and they will definitely find coalition partners). Will they continue to support the growth of our community and our schools? Will we be subject to even more harassment?

While I am happy we “threw the bum out” as he clearly needed to go, I am not sure that this choice is for the good. Only time will tell.