Election Day Sees Little Violence, Few Irregularities

By Hamodia Staff

YERUSHALAYIM — While the voting appeared to be proceeding peacefully throughout most of the country on Tuesday, the Central Elections Committee reported a few incidents of violence at polling stations.

CEC director general Orly Ades mentioned a furniture-throwing brawl in Taibe, an Arab city in central Israel. The regional elections committee is dealing with the incident together with the police, she said.

In the Krayot suburbs of Haifa, one voter threatened an official. The incident was captured on film and dealt with, she said.

In Carmiel in northern Israel and in Rehovot in the center, there was also violent behavior against election committee members, causing police to intervene. The reason for the altercation was not given.

As in all elections, there have been cases of alleged irregularities, though all those mentioned were small-scale.

In the northern city of Acre, a woman tried to vote using someone else’s identity document;

The CEC said that police were stationed at polling stations in the northern Druze town of Yarka after reports of irregularities. Officers will be posted at the entrance to each room where voting is taking place. So far, 18 officers have been assigned at the town’s 20 voting stations.

In one case of mistaken identity, a voter by the name of Itay Cohen complained that his name had been crossed off before he arrived to vote. It turned out that he shared a name with someone else on the registrar, and when the first one voted, the name of the second one was crossed off by mistake. The situation was subsequently clarified, and both Itay Cohens have now voted, Ades said, according to The Times of Israel.