Israeli Elections - Electoral Procedure

Electoral Procedure

National elections for the Knesset are required to be held once every four years, though early elections have occurred more often and few governments have reached the four year limit. Early elections can be called by a vote of the majority of Knesset members, or by an edict of the President, and normally occur on occasions of political stalemate and inability of the government to get the parliament's support for its policy. Failure to get the annual budget bill approved by the Knesset by March 31 (3 months after the start of the fiscal year) also leads automatically to early elections.

Israel uses the closed list method of party-list proportional representation; thus, citizens vote for their preferred party and not for any individual candidates. The 120 seats in the Knesset are then assigned (using the D'Hondt method) proportionally to each party that received votes, provided that the party gained votes which met or exceeded a 2% electoral threshold. Parties are permitted to form electoral alliances so as to gain enough collective votes to meet the threshold (the alliance as a whole must meet the threshold, not the individual parties) and thus be allocated seats. The low threshold makes the Israeli electoral system more favourable to minor parties than systems used in most other countries. Two parties can make an agreement so that both parties' sum of surplus votes are combined, and if the combined surplus votes amounts to an extra seat, then the extra seat goes to the party with the larger amount of surplus votes .

Any Israeli citizen over 21 may be elected to the Knesset, except holders of several high positions in the civil service and officers or career soldiers (those should resign from their post before the elections), soldiers in compulsory service, and felons who were convicted and sentenced to prison terms exceeding three months (until seven years after their prison term expired).

After an election, the President, following consultations with the elected party leaders, chooses the Knesset member most likely to form a viable coalition government. While this typically is the leader of the party receiving the most seats, it is not required to be so (the current Knesset was formed by Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud even though Kadima had won more seats). In the event a party wins 61 or more seats in an election, it can form a viable government without having to form a coalition. However, no party has ever won more than 56 seats in an election; thus, a coalition has always been required. That member has up to 42 days to negotiate with the different parties, and then present his or her government to the Knesset for a vote of confidence. Once the government is approved (by a vote of at least 61 members), he or she becomes Prime Minister.

As the coalitions are highly unstable given the number and diverse views of the political parties involved, parties (or portions thereof) leaving are quite common. However, so long as the coalition has at least 61 members (and it is free to recruit from parties not originally in the coalition) it is entitled to remain in power. This is the case with the current Knesset: Ehud Barak and four other members left the Labor to form the Independence Party and continued their alignment with Likud, while the remaining eight Labor members remained with the party but left the coalition; after all the changes the Likud coalition has the minimum 61 members and such it remains in power. Once a coalition fails a motion of confidence it ceases to be in power, but has a prescribed time to form a new coalition, after which other parties can attempt to form one, before early elections must be called.