Voting at the ballot box (illustration)
Voting at the ballot box (illustration)Uri Lenz/Flash 90

Millions of Israelis are flocking to the polls Tuesday, to vote for their preferred party for the 20th Knesset elections.

But what happens behind the scenes? 

Orly Ades, director of the Central Elections Committee, spoke about the pressures of election day on Army Radio's "Good Morning Israel" show as polls opened Tuesday morning.  

"I try not to be nervous, but we're definitely excited here, and we're making sure everything goes well," Ades stated. 

"The role of the Elections Committee is to organize and carry out the actual election, with all that implies - including any application of any one of the complex electoral laws," she explained. "We have done everything to get to this day, we have hundred workers across the country working day and night in order to ensure that everything goes smoothly."

Ades gave a few examples of the types of problems that can arise.  

"Usually in the morning there are issues of polls not opening on time - the possibility that the building's superintendent did not arrive on time, or a polling staffer did not come to open the polling stations," she said. "In these cases, the secretary of the polling committee fills the ballot stations with a lot of extra voter slips, so there are no problems." 

"We have 19 regional election commissions across the country, each of which controls a specific geographic area, including several communities," explained Ades. "Every polling station has a secretary, and a certain number of secretaries have a regional leader." 

"It's a complex operation," she concluded. "But what is most important to us is the purity of elections. We make every effort so that, at the end of the day, the vote reflects the will of the voters."