Orly Ades
Orly AdesCredit: Hezki Baruch

Central Election Committee director-general Orly Ades spoke to Arutz Sheva on Sunday about the committee's preparation for the third election campaign in less than a year.

Ades said that the preparation is "like the first time, like the second time and like every election campaign, only this time it is much more difficult. The preparation is the same preparation but a completely different schedule. It is also different in terms of the type of difficulties we're encountering."

"Sometimes it's about the employees - some of them don't want to come back. It's a hard and exhausting job. It's been a tough year for the people working in elections, so recruiting people is harder. "

"We haven't recruited people - only a few," Ades said, adding that the committee's senior officials decided not to return to their positions. "We'll deal with this and overcome it. We're starting the process, pulling out the registry of voters and transferring the files to the committee to check the locations of the polling stations."

This reminds Ades of an additional challenge the committee is facing: Hanukah vacation next week. "Most of the schools will be closed and it won't be possible to check the stations and the final deadline is December 30." [Voting stations in Israel are set up in neighborhood schools.]


This year, for the first time, the elections will be held on Monday and not Tuesday. Ades explains what the significance of this is. "Usually there are two days [after Shabbat when everything is closed] to tie up loose ends. This time, apparently, we'll start on Saturday night. We don't work on Shabbat. It's good that it's the winter and Shabbat ends early."