The polling stations in Israel have opened on Tuesday at 7 AM, and will remain open until 10 PM. As many as 6,339,279 Israelis are eligible to vote in 10,720 polling stations throughout the country. In order to vote, one must go to the polling station assigned them by to the Interior Ministry, and produce their identity card, passport or driver’s license.
To locate one’s polling station, click here for the special website of the Central Elections Committee. We clicked and received a response that the system is overloaded, please try later. We did it at 7:30 AM, so it’s going to be a long day. One can also dial *3857 and *3859 for information.
Voting in Israel is done using printed ballot notes placed inside envelopes, with each of the 41 slates in the race represented on a ballot with its own combination of Hebrew letters. There’s no room for interference by Russian hackers in these elections because no computers are in use.
Millions of ballot await voters in the polls around the country. If the ballots for one’s preferred slate are finished, one may write the letters representing one’s slate on a white note and put it in the envelope. This note counts just like a regular ballot and would be counted. Incidentally, if one stuffed as many as two identical ballots in one envelope – they count as a kosher vote.
Which votes will be disqualified? If the voter put an empty white paper in the envelope; if they wrote something on the note in addition to the letters representing a slate; if there’s a mark on the ballot that could identify the voter; or if the envelope contains more than two identical ballots or two different ballots.
Voters may not use an envelope they brought from home, only one provided by the Central Committee and signed by two members of the Ballot Committee.
Buses and train are running free on election day. If you moved to Eilat recently and haven’t changed your address officially, you get a free round trip up north and back.
The exit polls will start at 10 PM – we will be here, God willing, to provide the play-by-play.
According to the Basic Law: The Knesset, the Central Elections Committee must publish the real election results within 8 days of the elections. But we should know the score, give or take a seat, before midnight.
Parties can appeal the results by May 1.
That’s it, go vote – just once, with one ballot in one envelope.