Jerusalem Post
March 25 2006

Snap Judgement: Home is where the vote is
By CALEV BEN-DAVID

Here’s an interesting trivia question: Name at least one other
country besides Israel that does not allow absentee balloting (voting
from abroad, except for diplomatic officials) in national elections?

Need a hint? It’s another relatively small nation (population three
million) with a large diaspora community and a storied history,
bordered by hostile states in a volatile part of the world.

The answer can be found lower down. But before we get there, let’s
talk about why absentee balloting is still a bad idea for this
country, despite a recent Jerusalem Post editorial arguing otherwise.

There are indeed, as the editorial pointed out, arguments to be made
to change a policy that has existed since the founding of the state.
In the global communications age it is no longer a daunting task to
conduct an absentee ballot vote; far bigger countries than Israel,
including the US, do so without major problems. It is also true that
“as with most other developed democracies, Israel has thousands of
loyal citizens legitimately abroad for various periods of time, in
the wake of their admirably productive work in a rapidly globalizing
world.”

And yes, while once allowing absentee ballots had the stigma of
legitimizing yerida (emigration from Israel), it can be reasonably
argued that “Israel has become sufficiently established, both
demographically and economically, to not fear that an absentee ballot
would be misinterpreted as a prize for leaving.”

However that doesn’t mitigate the fact that an estimated 600,000
Israelis – roughly 10 percent of the electorate – now make their home
more-or-less permanently abroad. I’m hardly comfortable with the
notion that these expatriate Israelis could be such a decisive factor
in elections that, for example, could determine the state’s permanent
borders, and I can imagine many other resident Israelis who feel the
same.

Personally, when I moved from the US to Israel 20 years ago, I made a
decision to stop voting in American elections. In this globalized
world, it is indeed increasingly common for people to have
citizenship in more than one country; my own children hold three
different passports.

But voting is not a right of citizenship, it’s a privilege. In many
democratic societies, voter registration is not automatic (although
in this one it is) and can be limited under certain conditions (such
as for convicted prisoners). It certainly seems to me a reasonable
proposition that if one holds citizenship in a certain nation, but
has no intention of making permanent residence there, choosing not to
take part in its elections is the proper decision.

Of course, it’s not always so easy to determine whether someone is
really intending to reside permanently abroad; many Israelis
themselves don’t honestly know the answer to that question, even
after years of living away from home. At least one way then, of
testing the civic commitment of expatriates, is by demanding they
return home at least once every few years to vote in a national
election. This is presumably why countries with large diaspora
communities, such as Armenia – the answer to the above question –
have no absentee ballot.

YET EVEN if one rejects this argument, there’s another good reason
why absentee balloting is specifically a bad idea for Israel. The
problem is connected to the Law of Return, which makes it easier for
foreign Jews to obtain Israeli citizenship than immigrants to most
other countries. The Israeli expatriate community already includes
many immigrants who, for various reasons, returned to their countries
of origin, some after living here for a relatively short period of
time. In recent years there has even been growing concern that some
of these short-term olim basically exploited the Law of Return simply
to obtain the assistance given to new immigrants, before they
returned home or moved on elsewhere. If absentee balloting were
approved, it’s possible that the right to vote would be similarly
abused by Jews abroad looking to influence the ideological direction
of Israel without any intention to actually live here on a permanent
basis.

Sound far-fetched? I don’t think so. I personally know many such
people in the American Jewish community, on both the Right and Left,
who would like nothing better than having the privilege of voting in
Israeli elections, without the inconvenience of actually having to
pay Israeli taxes, serve (or have their children serve) in the IDF,
learn Hebrew, or risk getting on the same roads as Israeli drivers.

Nor can I say I blame them. Especially since there have been some
serious proposals – in one case from no less than Natan Sharansky –
suggesting that some kind of system be set up that would allow world
Jewry to take part in Israeli elections.

Even the recent PR effort “IsraelVotes,” in which American college
students took part via the Web in mock Israeli elections, seems to
suggest that it might be OK to cast a ballot here without actually
being here. “This is a chance to leverage the Israeli elections, to
use them as a way of showing off Israel’s democracy,” said one of its
promoters.

Actually, I find something profoundly anti-democratic in the notion
of foreign citizens, Jewish or otherwise, even pretending to vote in
another nation’s elections. What’s more, if voting by itself were a
mark of true democracy, the Palestinian Authority, Iraq, Syria and
Iran would all be in far better shape today.

While there may well be a way to answer all these concerns and still
allow absentee balloting, it’s probably best to just continue with
the present voting policy. I don’t relish the thought, under any
circumstances, of heated arguments over disengagement or settlements
at polling stations in Brooklyn, Los Angeles or Amsterdam. If it
really means so much to Israelis living abroad, they’ll find the
airfare to come home to cast their ballots. To quote an old saying in
a different context, “All politics is local” – so let votes about
Israel’s future borders at least be cast within the present ones.

The writer is director of The Israel Project’s Jerusalem Media
Resource Center.