Voting for mayor and city council

So, yesterday was the big day for local elections here in Israel. I was teaching all morning, so we planned to go to vote in the afternoon. Our builder, Zion, had called me to make sure that we would vote (for his party, of course!). I called him back when I was done teaching to get directions to the polls. Then we set out with our voter cards. There was a lot of traffic near the area, so I turned down another street and parked a very short distance away. Then we set out on foot, but clearly the directions were not complete. So I called Zion and told him where we were. He came over there in his car to take us to the right place. Or so he thought, at least! It was the same place where we had voted in the national election in the Spring of 2006, but it turned out NOT to be the right place for us for this election, although it WAS a polling place.

At this point, we just decided that the local elections were simply not THAT important and started to walk back to our car. But a young man from Zion's party apparently overheard us talking and understood enough to realize what we were doing. So, after verifying that we really were planning to vote for צפת 1 Tsfat 1 (Zion's party -- he's 2nd on their list of candidates, I think) and for עודד המאירי Oded HaMeiri for mayor (David was carrying their campaign booklet to make sure that he would vote correctly), he offered to lead us to our polling place, which was not far away. The fact that he was very easy on the eyes didn't hurt any, either! ;-)

Here's how the voting works: only one of us at a time was allowed in the room (which was a school library, I think). The election board consisted of maybe half a dozen or so young women. They checked our voter cards and our תאודות זהות t'udot zehut (national ID cards) and handed us 2 envelopes, a white one and a yellow one. Then we went to the voting booth, where we selected a white piece of paper for the party we wanted to vote for and put it in the white envelope. Similarly, we selected a yellow piece of paper for our mayoral choice and put it in the yellow envelope. After sealing the envelopes, we brought them out and put them in the ballot box in front of the election people.

As we walked back to our car (which was parked quite close, actually!), we both commented on how good it felt to have voted, even though I must admit that we're really not too clear on the issues in this election.

Later, in the evening, when we went to the supermarket, we passed 2 fairly large rallies and thousands of posters for various mayoral and city council candidates. These elections happen every 5 years, and it seems to us that Israelis make a bigger deal of these than of the national elections!