by Assaf Golan
If the election were held today, far too many votes would be lost to the minimum threshold, leading to yet another undecided result and a government that can't do its work.
If we have learned one lesson from the three recent elections, it's that we need to reduce the number of parties running for the Knesset – at both ends of the political spectrum.
The overabundance of parties leads to a huge number of votes being wasted on lists that don't make it past the minimum electoral threshold of 3.25%; a lack of the public's faith in the governability of the Knesset; and often a situation in which neither bloc emerges as a clear winner. What's worse, given the current state of Israeli politics, it is not inconceivable to think that we'll find ourselves heading into another election soon after the upcoming one.
Let's take a look at the numbers: In the last year and a half, we've had three close elections, but what was notable was the fact that in the election for the 21st Knesset, in April 2019, 366,000 valid ballots were thrown away. This has astonishing ramifications, since in that election 32,860 votes were needed to secure a single Knesset seat. In other words – in that election, the parties that failed to make it past the minimum threshold threw away some 11 seats.
A simple tally of the right-wing parties that didn't make it into the Knesset – Yamina (then the New Right) and Zehut – shows us that technically, if those lists had run on a joint ticket, Israel would have a right-wing government with a majority of about 70 Knesset seats. That would have allowed it to easily pass basic laws without any need for Avigdor Lieberman, who probably would have joined it, anyway. It's hard to conceive how that split on the Right has affected Israel.
Only some of the lesson is being learned
In the election for the 22nd Knesset in September 2019, it looked as if some of the parties had learned their lesson, and they united. When MK Orly Levy-Abekasis ran with a larger party and three right-wing parties formed the United Right, it dropped the number of lost votes down to 126,000, about a third of what it was in the April 2019 election. In the September 2019 election, each Knesset seat was "worth" about 35,000 votes – meaning that instead of 11 seats lost because parties failed to make it past the minimum threshold, 3.5 seats were lost. But when we examine those lost seats, it turns out that 2.9 of them were lost to the Right because of Otzma Yehudit and Tzomet. In that election, too, splits on the Right led to a draw.
In the March 2020 election for the 23rd Knesset, it appeared that both sides learned their lesson. And still, the Right dropped 24,500 votes on parties that didn't make it past the minimum threshold.
These three close election taught both camps that they need to minimize the number of votes lost to small parties. Still, going into the campaign for the 24th Knesset, the political system is in absolute chaos that could see a huge number of votes that fall by the wayside, and another undecided election.
If the election were held right now, with the parties as they currently stand, a lot more than 300,000 votes would be lost to the minimum threshold. That could chip away at the government's legitimacy or make the government so diverse that it is impossible to form a government. And then, we would have to hold yet another election.
Assaf Golan
Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/01/12/too-many-parties-could-waste-hundreds-of-thousands-of-votes/
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