The last votes that could change everything – Israel awaits count of 600,000 'double envelopes'

When the Central Elections Committee wraps up the counting of the votes cast at ballots across the country on Wednesday, Israelis will have a good sense of the election outcome.

However, the final result will be determined by 600,000 “double envelopes” whose count will only start after a short break on Wednesday afternoon and is expected to finish the next day.

The double envelopes contain the absentee ballots cast by regular duty soldiers and reservists, which make up the overwhelming majority, as well as several thousand diplomats, police officers, prison staff, hospital patients and displaced residents.

This year, the large number of active-duty IDF reservists has led to a significant overall increase, with the Central Elections Committee estimating that there are around 600,000 double envelopes.

The IDF said Wednesday that voter turnout among military personnel reached 79.9%, a 6.2% increase compared with the 2022 election.

Under the usual system, each voter places a placard with a code made up of several letters representing a certain party inside one envelope and then drops it into the ballot box.

For the absentee ballots, the envelope is sealed inside a second envelope with identifying information used by election officials to ensure the person has not voted twice.

As each Knesset mandate is worth around 40,000 votes, these final votes could be worth 13-15 mandates and have a significant impact.

In the past, the soldiers’ votes have leaned strongly toward the right, while containing almost no votes for the ultra-Orthodox or Arab parties, whose communities send only small numbers of soldiers to the IDF.

This usually boosts the Zionist parties while shrinking the relative share of the overall vote for the ultra-Orthodox and Arab parties; in this year’s case, United Torah Judaism (UTJ), Shas, Ra’am and the Joint List.

For example, during the last election in 2022, the regular votes suggested UTJ was about to win eight seats and Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beitenu party five; but once the double envelopes were added, UTJ dropped to seven and Yisrael Beitenu rose to five.

This time, i24 News’s pollster and Direct Polls director Tzuriel Sharon, whose projections appear to have been the most accurate, estimated the envelopes would favor the Netanyahu bloc and could add about another mandate to his side.

Elad Naveh, head of the Central Elections Committee's control center, told Ynet News on Wednesday morning, “even if we have a very large number of double-envelope ballots, as we expect — more than half a million — their distribution is generally similar to the nationwide distribution. There are no significant deviations.”

Explaining the counting process, Naveh said that the envelopes are first “cross-checked and verified to ensure that no one voted both at their assigned polling station and through a double envelope.”

“Then the ballots are assigned to election committees and the outer envelopes are opened. All of this happens before the actual count.”

He estimated that counting would begin Wednesday evening and be completed by the next evening, or stretch into Friday—but this will still not be the end of the counting process.

“Next week, on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, as well as Friday, we will conduct an audit of polling stations,” Naveh added. “We will recount a sample of polling stations, stations where certain incidents occurred and those where discrepancies were found.”

“In the previous election, we recounted almost half of all polling stations,” Naveh added. “We conduct checks upon checks upon checks to make sure the will of the voters is reflected in the results.”