How Your Ballot Is Counted After You Vote in Israeli Elections
Translated & summarized from Now 14 by baba
Vote counting for Israel's 26th Knesset elections starts at 10:00 PM, with polling station committees tallying ballots and comparing them to voter lists. Results are then sent to regional committees and entered into the Central Election Committee's system for online publication. Double envelopes are counted separately at the Knesset, and final results will be released within eight days.
The story in 5 lines · by baba
- Vote counting begins at 10:00 PM immediately after polling stations close.
- Ballots are tallied by party-appointed committees at each polling station.
- Results are sent to regional committees before being entered into the central system.
- Double envelopes are counted separately at the Knesset headquarters.
- Final election results are expected to be published within eight days.
The process of counting votes in Israel's 26th Knesset elections begins immediately after polling stations close at 10:00 PM. Once the last voter has cast their ballot, committee members, appointed by the parties, will open the ballot boxes and tally the votes for each list. They will then compare the total number of ballots to the number of voters marked on the registry and summarize the results in a signed protocol.
Following the initial count, the records and materials from each polling station are packaged and sent to one of 20 regional election committees across the country for review. From there, the results are entered into the Central Election Committee's computers, which will publish them on the committee's website throughout the night as the count progresses.
In parallel, double envelopes, which contain ballots from voters who cast their vote outside their registered district, are not counted at the polling stations. Instead, they are sent directly to the committee's headquarters in the Knesset building, where they are examined and counted only after the regular ballot count is completed.
Throughout the counting process, a purity of elections supervisor will photograph the proceedings at each polling station. Before the official results are published, the committee conducts further checks, including calculating the electoral threshold and allocating Knesset seats. The final results are expected to be announced within eight days of the election.
