More than 20 people were arrested on Tuesday across Israel for being involved in actions that either directly or indirectly resulted in election fraud. A spokesperson for the Police said that they have opened 69 investigations into cases that they believe involve attempts to corrupt the voting process across Israel. Among the illegal activities counted are, illegal campaigning, ballot or identity forgeries, acts of violence in the polling stations, and disrupting the peace.

A member of the ballot officiators in Arara, an Arab city in Wadi Ara, submitted a complaint that the chief officer of the ballot box shoved a bunch of envelopes with voting cards in them into the ballot box. Police are investigating the incident.

Another instance took place earlier in the day in the Bedouin town of Rahat where ballot box officials reported that a voter attempted to shove numerous envelopes into the ballot box. Police officers who arrived at the scene detained the suspect for voter fraud.

Later in the day police investigated the suspicion that five ballot boxes in the Israeli Arab town of Yarcha, located in the Galilee, were tampered with and that people tried to shove numerous envelopes into the box at one time. A number of suspects were detained by police.

Head of the Central Election Committee Judge Chanoch Meltzer instructed that the voting be suspended in those same ballot stations until the investigation into the matter could be concluded. Following the investigation, Meltzer instructed that the voting continue at those stations until midnight due to the delay. The number of voters who arrived to submit votes in those boxes will be counted and compared with the ballots in the boxes.

A 17-year-old boy was detained by the police after he arrived at a polling station in the center of Jerusalem with an identification card that was not his.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)