Politicians Worry Low Municipal Voter Turnout Not Low Enough To Signal Total Disillusionment

“Obviously that didn’t happen. But I’m confident it will.”

Jerusalem, March 12 – Local elections two weeks ago across Israel featured a further decline in electorate participation that has continued for years, according to statistical records, but falls short of the decline that officials desire that would indicate the vast majority of the electorate has despaired of having any say in the political process, freeing those officials from any accountability.

By percentage, voter turnout on Tuesday, February 27, fell into the low 40s, marking a continued downward trend since the early decades of Israel’s existence as a state saw consistent turnout over seventy percent. Low turnout plagues local municipal contests more severely than the frequent national parliamentary elections, a development that analysts attribute to the growing realization that local authorities hold little real power in a system that does not even permit localities to set the level of annual property taxes that fund the services the localities must provide. Nevertheless, the characteristic blend of fatalism and apathy has yet to deter a big enough share of the electorate that elected and other officials feel comfortable disregarding public opinion entirely.

“We’re not quite there yet,” acknowledged Minister of the Interior Moshe Arbel. “Some of my more optimistic colleagues predicted that voter participation would finally dip below twenty-five percent this time around. Obviously that didn’t happen. But I’m confident it will. All we need to do is maintain the policies and politics of the last thirty years, the steady erosion and undermining of public confidence in public institutions and leadership.”

“Failing to form any government that lasts out its term is one key to that ongoing effort,” he continued. “I think there’s been exactly one full-term Knesset in the last thirty-five years. Our fractured polity virtually guarantees that trend will continue. The disconnect between voters’ choices and what the government ends up doing has only become more profound in that time, exacerbated by the fact that certain minority demographics vote more uniformly and assiduously, granting those minorities outsize representation and influence, thus further degrading the majority’s sense that their vote matters anymore.”

“Single-digit-percentage voter participation is a question of when, not of whether,” he added. “I hope it happens when I’m still in politics.”

Few Israeli officials expect such a decline in voter turnout, even if it holds over time, to imply that Israelis will stop complaining about their leaders. “If they’re not criticizing, we assume they’ve died,” acknowledged Minister of the Economy Nir Barkat. “We need them to be alive so we can keep taking their money.”

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