Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
By holding primaries, as some parties do, voters who are party members can participate
in selecting the candidates on party ballots. Primaries also provide an incentive for citizens to
join a party formally, counteracting the general trend in Western democracies toward reduced
party loyalty. But the party leaders still determine the precise lineup in the party list.
The order of the candidates on the list is extremely important. After an election, the total
number of votes is divided by 120, the number of seats in the Knesset. The number resulting
from the division is used to calculate how many seats each party will have. Parties that win at
least 2 percent of the vote gain one seat for each multiple of the index number.
In 2009, for example, there were roughly 3.3 million valid votes. About 100,000 of them
went to parties that did not make the minimum of 2 percent. Thus, a party received one seat
for approximately every 27,000 votes received. The 100,000 “wasted” votes were then redis-
tributed to those parties closest to gaining another seat. Two parties often make vote-sharing
agreements to pool their “extra” votes. The partner that gets the most votes above what is
needed to earn its last seat gets the “extra” votes of both, thus gaining one more representative.
The Basic Law on elections (the Knesset Law) calls for Knesset elections to be secret, direct,
nationwide, and based on proportional representation. Every Israeli citizen over the age of
eighteen has the right to vote. Elections are managed by the Central Elections Committee
(CEC), which comprises one Supreme Court justice and members of the parties represented
in the outgoing Knesset. The CEC has the right to decide whether a candidate or a party vio-
lates the laws governing who can run, a decision that can be reviewed and overturned by the
Supreme Court.
It is not diffi cult to form a party or list to run for the Knesset. Before the elections, each
party must present a platform and its candidates listed in order of preference. A candidate who
drops out or resigns is replaced by the next name on the list. Anyone over the age of twenty-
one — aside from the incumbent president, judges, state comptroller, senior public offi cials,
and chief of staff — is eligible to be a candidate. Parties sitting in the outgoing Knesset are au-
tomatically qualifi ed to run; new parties must put down a monetary deposit and collect 2,500
signatures to present to the Central Elections Committee.
The thirty-three parties that ran in 2009 exceeded the previous record of thirty-one in 1981.
Parties have the option of running a joint list, which increases their chance of passing the
threshold and obtaining more seats. At times, these alliances seem natural, as when Ashkenazic
and Mizrahi Haredi parties run under one banner or when a group of left-wing parties merged
to run together as Meretz. Sometimes partnerships are more unlikely, as when the religious,
left-wing Meimad teamed up with the Green Movement in 2009 or when the Holocaust Sur-
vivors Party ran on a ticket with the pro-marijuana Green Leaf Party in the same election. In
neither case did the alliance pass the threshold percentage of votes.
Some campaigning begins as soon as an election is announced, but campaigning cannot
legally begin until three weeks prior to election day. On the opening date, posters and ad-
vertisements sponsored by the parties plaster the country and fi ll the airwaves. Each party is
given a set amount of free television time based on how many votes it received in the previous
election.
