Can one polling station change the political map and oust Yitzchak Pindrus from the eighth Yahadut Hatorah seat, which will be given to the Likud party?

According to a Makor Rishon newspaper report, there is a polling station in Akko in which 93 ballots have disappeared, ballots from the United Right-Wing party. If those ballots are counted, then the seat will transfer from Yahadut Hatorah to Likud and Pindrus’ term as a MK will come to an abrupt end.

In the report, filed by correspondent Yair Krauss, the Bayit Yehudi party has turned to Central Election Committee Chairman Justice Chanan Meltzer the day after elections, and the party is yet to receive a response. The committee officially states that it has responded to all queries. Then the committee stated it never received an inquiry pertaining to the questionable Akko polling station. The committee then stated that the query was lost.

Akko Councilman Naftali Roznikovich, who served as a poll watcher during Knesset elections, told the newspaper, “We received multiple telephone inquiries from persons asking what happened to their votes. I first told them that I was a poll watcher and therefore, we know exactly how many votes are missing. I am certain the election committee will make the necessary correction and include the 93 votes so each and every voter’s ballet is counted.”

Attorney Amit Halevi, who holds the 36th slot on the Likud list, who has already filed a petition challenging the results of the elections, told Makor Rishon that “the state of the votes, as I know it, leaves no doubt that the Likud received 36 Knesset seats.”

“I am in contact with the members of the committee, and for this reason, their unilateral enlistment is surprising, and before I turned to the court I informed them of dozens of votes in favor of the Likud and Bayit Yehudi, but they chose to ignore them and to inform the court of individual votes they found in favor of Yahadut Hatorah. They chose to act as a lawyer for a party, instead of fulfilling its role as a neutral body, and I am certain that the District Court will do justice and will not prevent the voter’s will from being realized.”

On the other hand, Yahadut Hatorah representative, Attorney Avraham Yustman, explains that the party intends to fight and search for every shred of a voice in order to preserve the number of seats in the Knesset, and that the party has is demanding a recount of all votes in all polling stations in Israel.

“There is no choice but to open and thoroughly examine every 10,500 polling stations from the first to the last, without exception,” says Yustman. “If things are not investigated beyond reasonable doubt, we are in trouble, and the state either conducts a comprehensive probe of all polling stations or reject all challenges outright.”

The Central Elections Committee said in response: “Around the day of the elections, the Knesset factions passed various requests to examine the results at various polling stations, and within the framework of sample tests carried out by the Central Elections Committee, about 750 different polling stations were examined. However, it is hereby clarified that at this time the results as typed into the computer and posted on the Committee’s website correspond to the results recorded in the minutes of the Ballot Committee, and therefore any further examination (of ballots) requires a reasoned legal request, which has not been submitted until the last few days.

“Following the appeal of the elections submitted by the Likud candidate, Amit Halevi, Yahadut Hatorah asked to review the election material (it should be emphasized that the request did not include the ballot boxes in Akko). In the decision of Justice Meltzer, referring to this appeal, it was stated: ‘I would like to point out that respondent number 4 [United Right-Wing party] did indeed ask that the results be checked in a number of polling stations in proximity to Election Day, and as I was informed, the request was examined in the framework of the Central Elections Committee’s examination of all the factions that submitted the request in a timely manner, and in some cases, it was found that respondent 4’s response should be accepted, and in some of them no defect was found in the results of the polling station. But the application was properly examined, and the respondent did not submit an application to review the materials at the time.’

‘Therefore, when a legal request was submitted by the United Right-Wing party to review the materials relating to votes of polling station number 49 in Akko, we are unable to relate in concrete terms to the arguments against the results at this polling station.'”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)