Election News

The latest regarding Israel's 2003 elections:

12/04/2008 | Labor voters hit polls for 2nd time

Labor members started voting for their party's Knesset list Thursday, after Tuesday's attempt at electronic voting had to be called off after three hours, due to technical failures.

Thousands of Laborites voted early Tuesday before the vote was canceled.

On Wednesday, tens of thousands of members received a recorded telephone message from party general-secretary MK Eitan Cabel that included an apology and a request to go to the polling booths again.

"We are all obligated to maintain clean and transparent elections. I apologize to each one of you for the failure that damaged us all so badly," Cabel said.

Officials said they were not worried that people who had already voted would fail show up a second time.

Thursday's second round is being conducted with old-fashioned manual voting.

Each one of Labor's 59,039 members will be asked to choose at least five, but no more than eight, Knesset candidates running on the national list, as well as to select their preferred candidate for each of the slots reserved for specific sectors, such as the "neighborhoods," immigrants, the kibbutzim, moshavim, geographic districts, Arabs and Druse.

The party is spending approximately NIS 500,000 on supervision in an attempt to reduce fraud or other irregularities. A private company has been hired for this purpose and its representatives will be monitoring the 195 polling booths.

The polls will be open from noon to 10 p.m. Voters have been assigned polling stations and will receive voice messages explaining where they should vote. Initial results and turnout rates are due by midnight.

Source: www.jpost.com

12/02/2008 | New Poll: Labor Crashes, Likud Wins

According to a poll published on Monday and conducted by 'Panels Ltd.' for Channel 2, were elections held today, Labor, headed by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, would crash to only 6 Knesset seat. Labor won 19 seats in the last election.

According to the new poll, the Likud would gain 33 seats as opposed to Kadima's 25.

The poll finds that Labor would be replaced as the largest party on the Left by Meretz - predicted to receive seven seats. United Torah Judaism and the Green Party would both get four seats, according to the poll.

The poll gave Shas 12 seats, Israel Beiteinu 11, the Arab parties 10 and the new Right-wing party Habayit Hayehudi 7.

10/28/2008 | Israel Heading to New Elections!

Kadima leader Tzipi Livni was unable to assemble a ruling coalition of 61 Members of Knesset and therefore Israel is heading to national elections. Livni, who succeeded Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as Kadima's leader after he resigned in September, will be up against Labor's Ehud Barak and Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu.