Knesset Seats Now Allocated by Ballot Drawn From Polling Station Queues
After a week of voting, the Central Elections Committee has ruled that every future Knesset seat will be decided by a public lottery held at the back of the polling station queue.
The Central Elections Committee announced on Thursday that all Knesset seats will henceforth be allocated by lottery among citizens who remained in polling station queues for more than two hours on election day. Committee chairman Avraham Lerner said the decision followed a week of counting in which, in his words, voters «expressed their preferences by standing still for longer than anyone had ever stood still before.»
Under the new procedure, sealed envelopes bearing the names of every party list are placed in a wooden drum at each station. Officials then draw one envelope per seat while the waiting voters sit on folding chairs in the car park. Several polling stations in Tel Aviv and Haifa have already installed numbered ropes, bollards and a second row of tables to accommodate the expected overflow of queue-based representatives.
The Ministry of Finance has begun a tender for 9,600 orange plastic chairs, and the Jerusalem municipality has closed two bus lanes to create a dedicated queueing corridor. Party strategists say they are now hiring specialist queue managers, and one leading faction has opened a training school for candidates who can read a clock for six consecutive hours without complaint.
Lerner confirmed that the first drawing under the new system will take place next month, when the chosen members will be issued plastic name badges and asked to report to the Knesset canteen, where they will be served lukewarm coffee and expected to vote on the budget.
1