Sunday, May 3, 2020

Israel's election process, democracy--and Israel's High Court

(Last updated: May 19, 2020) 

In simplest terms, a democracy is a form of government where a nation's citizens have real power. Typically, this power comes from elections, where citizens use the ballot box to make a nation's most important decision: who will lead (here)?

While elections certainly don't guarantee that a nation remains 'a democracy', the presence of elections in a democracy does make a 'statement': elections mean that 'the power to choose a leader lies with the voter alone--and not with any cabal, elite, or ruling regime. 

But Israel's democracy has a problem. Elections in Israel don't reflect the voter's power to choose a leader. Israel's elections may actually deny voters that power. This denial has a very nasty name: lawful disenfranchisement. 

Is Israel, so aggressively touted as a legitimate democracy, actually guilty of denying its citizens the power of the ballot box? Indeed, does Israel choose its leaders by using a form of legal disenfranchisement that rejects ballot box results? 

To answer these questions, consider just  one part of Israel's multi-tiered election process--what happens after election results in Israel are published. What happens after an Israeli election reveals the first clue that Israel might use lawful disenfranchisement against its voters. 

The way Israel's election system works, the candidate with the most votes in a national election doesn't 'win the election'. Instead, once election result numbers become clear, the only sure thing that occurs, is that voters essentially get cut out of the process of choosing the nation's leader. Is that how a democracy is supposed to work?

The first thing that happens in Israel after election results are in is that everyone turns away from the voters' choice to focus instead on the nation's President--who, by the way, is not elected by voters, but by politicians who serve in Israel's Parliament, the Knesset. As soon as election results are known, the President's job is to push the voters' choice aside in order to consult with all political Parties which have succeeded in getting elected into the Knesset (in the same election in which PM candidates run). The President (currently, Reuven Rivlin) asks each Party leader just one question: who will your Party's newly elected Knesset Members support for Prime Minister? 

Voter disenfranchisement begins here because the candidate with the most votes doesn't automatically get the support of any of the newly elected MKs, except those in his own Party. In fact, to answer the President's question (above) Members of Knesset (MKs) can choose anyone they like. They can choose to support themselves for PM if they wish. The voters' ballot box choice is ignored.

The President's goal here is to find out which candidate in the recent election will be supported by the most MKs. Once the President adds up the answers he has received, the President must then choose the one candidate he (the President, not the voters) feels has the best chance to get the support of 61 MKs, which is the minimum number of MKs a candidate needs to form a ruling government coalition. The candidate chosen by the President at this time doesn't automatically get to be Prime Minister. All he--or she--gets is the opportunity to convince a total of 61 MKs to agree to join him in forming a coalition. 

Of course, in Israel's election system, if a candidate's political Party wins enough seats in the Knesset to secure 61 seats, then, yes, the candidate who is that Party's leader can automatically be chosen by the President to be PM. But such a circumstance has never happened in Israel. That is, it has never happened that just one political Party so dominated an election that it earned enough votes to secure at least 61 Parliamentary seats. 

So in order to rule, a PM-candidate in Israel always needs to find and 'control' at least 61 seats. He attempts to do this by convincing enough competitor Parties to join him in forming a coalition government that will contain (at least) 61 MK seats (each MK represents one Knesset seat). 

Once Israel's President chooses one candidate to make that attempt (to get a total of 61 MKs to join with him), that candidate begins what might be called either politics-at-its-best or, alternatively, politics-at-its-worst. What happens next isn't so much politics as it is a political form of "horse-trading".

For this Israeli political version of "horse-trading", each Party leader who has told the President that he supports the candidate in question will now officially meet with that candidate. At these meetings, each of these Party leaders makes his case for helping that candidate to create a ruling coalition. He makes his case by asking the candidate just one question: how many Government Ministries will you give to my Party to control in order to convince me to join your government?  

Notice that, at this crucial point in Israel's most important democratic process--choosing its national leader--the voters' ballot decisions are nowhere to be seen. In fact, at this point in the process, the voter has been completely forgotten.

This is legal. This is why you may call this process a legal disenfranchisement. It legally ignores the voters' choice for national leader. 

This is how Israel defines its 'democracy--not by using  elections to choose its next PM--but through laws which grant to politicians that ultimate power. These politicians get the legal right to deny the results of the voters' ballots. It's a definition that allows politicians, not voters, to choose the next national leader.  

This form of 'democracy' can be summed up easily: politicians ignore the voters. They just do what's best for themselves.

This is 'democracy' at work? Really?

The real working portion of Israel's election process--where a leader is actually chosen--isn't about counting ballots. It's about political "horse-trading". This is what warps Israel's democracy. Politicians choose leaders, not the voters.

You might also wish to note that, in Israel, elected politicians are not indebted to any voter or voter district. They represent no one.They are indebted only to their Party leader--or their own conscience, if they have one.

Israel's election process is more complex than this. This (above) is just the starting point. There's much more--too much to go into here.

Israeli elections are overly--perhaps even suspiciously--complex. Elections in Israel are more complex than the proverbial Rube Goldberg device--an incredibly complicated and/or elaborate contraption that leads to a very, very simple solution. Elections in democracies aren't supposed to be this complex. They're supposed to be simple. 


In fact, if a democracy is to be truly legitimate, a nation's elections should be both simple and transparent. Anything else might look to voters like a game aimed at fleecing the voter, not empowering him. 

Israel's election process does not give voters the power to choose their next leader. It takes that power away. Israel's elections legally disenfranchise the voters. 

Such a process is not good for democracy. For Israel, it may turn out to be disastrous.

You see, the news regarding the disenfranchisement of Israel's voters got worse today (May 3rd) because Israel's High Court heard a case about overturning our most recent (March 2020)  national election. The case before the Court is against Benjamin Netanyahu. The case requests that the Court effectively overturn the March 2020 election by prohibiting its vote-winner (Netanyahu) from forming a new government--because he has been indicted for crimes against the State. 

You might wish to  note that Israel's current law requires all indicted Ministers and MKs to step down until they are proven innocent--except a Prime Minister. An indicted PM is not required to step down until he has been found guilty--and all appeals have been exhausted. Current PM Netanyahu's trial isn't scheduled to begin until later this month.

The case before the Court today was, in essence, to nullify the existing law so as to force Netanyahu to step down immediately. 

Some in Israel argue that, to protect Israel's 'democracy', the voters' choice in the recent election must be nullified. They argue that the High Court must nullify the election even though the voters who voted for Netanyahu knew about his indictments before they voted--but chose him anyway. 

If the High Court rules against Netanyahu, will it thereby enshrine into law the legal disenfranchisement of Israel's voters? More important still, given the importance of elections to the meaning of 'democracy', what will overturning a legitimate election say about Israel's democracy?

Stay tuned.




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