by
Kislev 12, 5769, 12/9/2008
G-d willing the winners will serve the country well
The Likud didn't want certain people voting in the primaries. It's obvious. For sure they didn't want paid members who live in areas with Feiglin supporters to vote. They made things as difficult as possible.
Look at the crowds. We, in Shiloh were lucky. We live here. It was the regional voting station for an area that includes not only the "Shiloh block" of Shiloh, Eli, Maale Levona and the hilltops. There wasn't a polling station in Ofra, or Tapuach or Kochav Hashachar, well to the southeast of us.
People I know from all those places came here to vote.
"So, what?", you may say. They can get to Shiloh in 15-20 minutes. But I left out something. Voting was computerized, and...
... there was only one computer.
People waited for hours to vote, no exaggeration. To make a bad situation worse, many weren't fully prepared with their lists of numbers. The instructional posters, which were supposed to be part of the polling station "kit" weren't there. The people manning the station told me that they hadn't received them, and it had never occurred to them to just print off lists, so the waiting voters would know what to do.
On the computer screen there weren't any names, just 250 numbers on the screen, like those memory games. "Click two and see if the same picture shows on both." The voting station staff said that I voted the quickest. Of course, they don't have any idea how long it took me to decide whom to vote for. I consulted with all sorts of people. But I did my "prep" on my own time, before I went to vote.
G-d willing the winners will serve the country well, lots better than I fear they will.
