Don’t just sit there. Vote!
The key to change is getting people motivated enough to head for their polling place
Put in the slip! Whomever you vote for, vote!
Israel’s highest voter turnout – 87% – was recorded during the first Knesset election, held on January 25, 1949. That’s quite a slice of the country’s eligible voters. Since then, however, aside from some ups and downs along the way, voter turnout has eroded.
One noteworthy figure belongs to the 1973 election, delayed by two months until after the end of the devastating Yom Kippur war. You might think that following such a disaster, voters would have turned out in droves reminiscent of 1949. But only 79% did.
For the next 20 years, turnout data remained static, even for the election held half a year following another traumatic event in the country’s history, the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, when turnout was again recorded at 79%.
With centrist parties beginning to appear after the turn of the millennium, voter turnout dropped below 70%. Aside from burps to 72% in 2015 and a similar figure in 2020, turnout remained low as Israel endured five elections in four years due to inconclusive or weak electoral results. It was a country badly divided and, yes, exhausted by deadlock after so many decades of conflicts and serious, even existential issues that could not be resolved.
THE 2022 ELECTION seemed destined to turn into another ho-hum affair until Merav Michaeli, head of the beleaguered center-left Labor Party, refused to run together with the leftist Meretz Party, a union that probably would have assured a sufficient level of moderate Knesset representation that, together with a strong centrist turnout, would stymie any effort by the Right to form a government.
When the final votes were tallied, Michaeli’s Labor netted just four parliamentary seats, down from seven in the previous Knesset. As for Meretz, which previously fielded six seats, it failed to pass the threshold at all, meaning many thousands of votes cast by leftist or otherwise moderate voters went down the tubes, leaving those who had cast them feeling entirely disenfranchised.
The 2022 voter turnout was just 70%, meaning that fully 30% of eligible voters had not felt motivated enough to even show up. Following the election, op-ed after op-ed made it clear that the general feeling among liberal voters now was why even bother?
This sentiment and the fact that almost a third of all voters stayed away in 2022, should give anyone pause in light of what has happened since Netanyahu – knowing that a litany of unkept promises to centrist leaders meant he could not expect their support – turned instead to two far-right-wing parties to form a government
Given those parties’ similar distrust of the judiciary that was now trying Netanyahu on multiple allegations of corruption that could send him to jail and end his political career, he saw them as a lifeline, an opportunity to revamp – read: neuter – the sole branch of power in Israel that stood between him and his continued reign of power, as well as the autocratic and even fascistic tendencies that were sure to emerge from such a coalition. After all, those far-right parties would demand their price in return for keeping Netanyahu out of jail.
The resulting government’s immediate, brash and unrestrained effort to bring about judicial reform that would suit its purposes ended up bringing out hundreds of thousands of Israelis into the streets on a weekly basis to say, “No, this cannot stand.” The large-scale protests were noisy but mostly peaceful, though younger cohorts among the protesters often challenged law enforcement personnel with blocked highways, bonfires and personal efforts to resist arrest that made headlines for months.
Then came October 7. Accusations flew in both directions: that the protesters had given Hamas a sign that Israel was ripe for an attack, or that the government itself was entirely unprepared for the onslaught.
Two years later, it doesn’t really matter.
WHAT DOES MATTER is that Israel is now officially in an election year. If elections are held on schedule, they will take place in October or November 2026. However, Netanyahu’s government is embroiled in numerous internal squabbles that could move up elections to as early as March.
This is where the 30% that didn’t vote in 2022 come in.
Israel is on the cusp of emerging from a dark, dangerous predicament to one of hope, change and a concerted effort to undo what two years of callous disregard for both Israeli and Palestinian lives has done for its standing in the world.
The key to change is getting out the vote. If you didn’t vote in 2022 and are miserable because of the outcome, this is your chance.
Get off your ass!
This is not to say that all of those who failed to vote in 2022 will vote for sanity. It is entirely possible that many will vote for Netanyahu and the Right. And it is their prerogative to do so. But with so much hanging in the balance, and so much of it existential in nature, nothing less than a 90% turnout – even just 87%, as turned out in 1949 – will do.
We are at a crossroad, one that will shape this nation for the coming decades. Only a high turnout of voters will put to bed the nation’s true feelings. When elections come around – and I hope they do – vote as if your life depended on it. Because it will.