Everything you need to know about Election Day

  Tomorrow at 7:00 am the polls will open and a day of democracy will begin.  Mar 16, 2015, 10:15AM | Gal Cohen

Photo Credit: Channel 2 News/Flash 90

On Tuesday, March 17, Israeli citizens will exercise their democratic right and cast their votes bearing the name of their elected political party. The next morning, the results will be announced, and the new Knesset will be sworn in and begin the process of forming the government. Before this all happens however, Channel 2 News has assembled a comprehensive guide to the elections.

Voting Procedure: Who is entitled to vote where - and who is eligible for transportation to the polls?

Polls will open across the country at 7 am and close at 10 pm.  The results will then be announced on television. In communities with up to 350 people, polls will open and 8 am and close at 8 pm.  

There will be  stocks of ballots with the names of the 25 parties running for the Knesset. There are nearly eight million ballots printed for each party. Some of them are in Arabic as well as Hebrew, and they are used at the polls in Arab communities.  

The ballots - and all voting materials, are kept until the final results of the election are determined, and after that in case of appeals - and then they are destroyed. In addition, there are also blank ballots at every voting location.  These are intended to be used in the case that the ballots for a certain party run out, so a voter can write in which party they want and it will be considered a legitimate vote.  

Upon arrival to the polls, the voters must arrive at the polling station committee with photographed identification; otherwise they are not permitted to vote. There is an exception, however, for Muslim women who wear veils and have received special permission from the minister of interior to be registered to vote without photo I.D. 

A voter who is farther than 20 kilometers from their designated polling station is entitled to transportation provided by the state.  

Soldiers, emissaries of the Foreign Ministry, state employees abroad, emissaries of Zionist institutions, inpatients in hospitals, women living in shelters, prisoners, and disabled citizens residing permanently in special homes may vote remotely. There are 194 polling stations in hospitals and 56 in prisons.  

For Israeli embassies abroad, elections began 12 days before the elections in Israel. Overall, there are 98 polling stations scattered around the world. On IDF bases, voting begins 72 hours earlier, and ends with the conclusion of Election Day.  

Photo Credit: Channel 2 News/Flash 90

People with limited mobility are entitled to vote in any of the 1,547 polling stations across the country, and voting arrangements are adapted for them. Police are entitled to vote at any polling station, but they must be wearing their uniform. Voting papers are taken from them after they vote to ensure that they don't vote again at other polls.

At the end of Election Day, after the polls are closed, members of the polling committee count the votes, note the number of votes received by each party, compare the number to the number of voters at the polls, and then summarize the results. There are inspectors who supervise the process at each station. The chairman of the committee is responsible for calculation errors, if any. Records and paperwork from all polls are sent to the Local Election Committee for review - and the results are inputted to a computer connected to the computers belonging to the Central Election Committee.  

During the tallying process, there are expected to be invalid votes: blank ballots, ballots that have something on them that is not the sign for a party or a party’s nickname, an envelope with two or more ballots, an unofficial envelope not provided by the committee, or one that has no signature of two committee members on it. An envelope that contains two ballots with the same party name will be considered as one vote and not be disqualified.

Photo Credit: Channel 2 News

Throughout the night, the results from across the country will be sent to the Central Elections Committee in Knesset, which is expected to publish the results the next day - according to the allocation of 120 seats to the competing parties.  It is possible to track the results in a live broadcast on the committee’s website: www.bechirot.gov.il .  

Any party that does not receive the minimum number of votes will not enter Knesset - and in fact, valid votes that did not pass the threshold are ignored.  The total number of valid votes is divided by 120 and the results are called the “gauge”.  The number of valid votes that each party receives in the “gauge” is divided, in order to determine the number of seats each party earned. After this division, there are still a few seats left to reach 120 - and they are divided according to the Bader-Ofer method (the highest averages, which give favor to the biggest parties). 

Appeals to the election results can be submitted to the District Court of Jerusalem within two weeks of their publication. The appellant must prove a defect which might have influenced the outcome of the elections. Elections were repeated once in the history of Israel, in 1988, in three polling stations.  Two weeks after the elections, at 4 pm, the Knesset will hold a swearing-in ceremony for the 120 new members ok Knesset. At the same time, the candidates will continue to hold frantic talks in order to form a new government.  By law, Election Day is a holiday but certain services remain active, including: public transportation, parking lots and gas stations, emergency agencies, media outlets, restaurants and cafes, theaters, and cinemas.  

What are the rights of workers on Election Day? Every employee on March 17 receives a 4% increase in lieu of the holiday, reimbursement for public transportation expenses, and payment for overtime in excess of 8 hours. An important detail to know is that 25% of the salary that day is deducted for income tax.  An employee working that day still receives 100% of the salary, and a worker whose profession does not call for them to work on this day will receive at least 200% of their salary. Those who work on the election campaign for one day only will earn at least the minimum wage, and an election campaign worker employed for 14 days will receive double the salary.