Israel heads to polls for municipal elections
More than seven million eligible Israelis in over 200 municipalities and regional councils across the country will head to the voting booth on Tuesday to choose their local leadership, four months after the originally scheduled Election Day was postponed amid the war with Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
Polls will open at 7 a.m. and close at 10 p.m. at 11,600 locations, except in communities with fewer than 350 residents, where voting will end at 8 p.m.
Voters cast two ballots—for the head of the council and for a council slate. There are 24,910 candidates running for election on 4,500 party slates, including 801 mayoral candidates.
Israelis will get the day off work on election day; employees who are required to work are entitled to 200% pay or additional leave hours.
Nine regional municipalities in Israel’s north and south, whose 180,000 residents were evacuated as a result of the war, will not cast their votes on Tuesday but on Nov. 19, 2024, over a year after the originally scheduled election.
Voting in the Israel Defense Forces already kicked off on Feb. 20, with the military operating approximately 925 polling stations, including 150 mobile booths, to allow regular and reserve soldiers to elect their local leaders.
IDF voting booths were set up in the Gaza Strip and on the border with Lebanon to serve on-duty combat soldiers stationed in those areas.
The Oct. 31 municipal elections were initially delayed to Jan. 30 in light of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attacks, in which 1,200 people were massacred in Israel and thousands more were wounded. On Dec. 31, the Israeli Cabinet approved postponing the election four more weeks to Feb. 27.
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