This year’s volume of double envelopes amounts to roughly 15 seats’ worth of votes.
By David Israel, TPS
The Central Elections Committee estimated on Wednesday that between 650,000 and 700,000 Israelis cast their ballots in double envelopes.
The figure is higher than the 600,000 to 650,000 the committee projected before polls opened.
Counting is expected to conclude only on Thursday, and all official results published until then should be considered partial.
Double envelopes hold the votes of anyone who voted at a polling station other than the one where they are registered.
They include soldiers, police officers, prisoners, hospital patients, residents of institutions, voters with disabilities using accessible stations, ballot-committee members and secretaries, and state representatives abroad.
About 100 polling stations were set up at Israeli missions around the world.
They have closed, and their votes will be counted in Israel after election day.
Two groups are driving this year’s increase.
The first is reservists, many of whom voted at their units rather than near home.
Soldiers serving beyond the border, in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon, could vote from 10 p.m. on October 20, as could soldiers heading out on operations on election day.
A soldier without an ID card can identify himself with a military dog tag, through another soldier who knows him, or with a photograph of an identifying document.
The second group is civilian evacuees who left their homes near the Gaza and Lebanese borders since October 7, 2023, and have not returned.
They can vote at a dedicated polling station after identifying themselves and signing a declaration.
The scale is unprecedented. More than 460,000 Israelis voted this way in 2022. Votes of this kind are usually 3% to 5% of the total, and counting them typically shifts the seat map by one or two mandates.
This year’s volume amounts to roughly 15 seats’ worth of votes that will be tallied after Tuesday night’s results.
The 2021 election also set a record: more than 450,000 votes were cast in double envelopes that year, and they were enough to move over 10 seats.
Counting takes time because of how the envelopes are handled. Under the committee’s procedure, officials must check that each voter did not also vote at their designated polling station.
Afterward, the ballot envelopes are taken out of the double envelopes and mixed together to preserve voting secrecy.
The direction of the shift has been fairly consistent.
Because most double-envelope voters serve in the IDF, the count usually takes seats from the Haredi and Arab parties , whose voters don’t serve.
