MK Gafni, of the hareidi-religious United Torah Judaism party, was himself elected to the 12th Knesset in 1988 based on this arrangement. It is based on the fact that each party running for Knesset receives Knesset seats in proportion to the amount of votes it received. The arrangement in question addresses the problem of the "extra" votes.
If, for instance, one party receives enough votes for 12.3 seats, and another party receives enough for 11.8 seats, then the second party [with the larger amount of unused votes] receives the first one's extra votes - and both are granted 12 Knesset seats. This applies only if the two parties signed this "extra seats" agreement before the election.
Gafni explained to Arutz-7 today that for one thing, "this arrangement distorts the will of the voter... Some people want to vote for our party, and might not even have participated at all in the elections if not to vote for us - and suddenly they might find that their vote has gone to another party for which they did not want to vote. True, the voters know this in advance, but it is still a distortion of their true will."
The example Gafni cited is a common phenomenon within the sector that supports his party. Many UTJ voters would in fact not take part in the elections if not for their rabbis' instructions to vote for that specific party. It is likely that UTJ spokesmen have a difficult time explaining to their constituents why they should come out and vote if ultimately their vote might be used to benefit another party.
Gafni then candidly admitted that he would have overlooked this problem if he saw that his party gained from it. "But I checked the last three Knesset elections, and then checked the ones before that, and found that it does not necessarily help small parties like us. One time we gain, and one time we lose, and other times it makes no difference at all. So we might as well nullify it altogether."
Gafni noted that in the last election, the National Religious Party gained a sixth mandate because of its agreement with the One Nation party led by Amir Peretz. "The NRP received 6 Knesset seats," Gafni said, "and we received only 5, even though we received 2,500 more votes than the NRP. But we refused to sign an 'extra-votes' agreement with a secular party."
MK Sha'ul Yahalom of the NRP does not agree with Gafni, and said that he is "playing into the hands of the large parties." Yahalom said that in the past 30 years, the small right-wing and religious parties gained six Knesset mandates because of the "extra seats" arrangement: Shas (11th Knesset (1984) and the current Knesset); Moledet (11th); Degel HaTorah (12th); Yisrael Beiteinu (15th); NRP (current). The Likud also gained one seat in the 14th Knesset, while Labor lost two seats in the 11th Knesset and Shinui lost one in the current Knesset
The Knesset approved Gafni's bill on Tuesday, and the proposal must now be discussed and approved by a Knesset committee before being brought for its final Knesset votes.
Asked about the possibility of an election merger of all the religious parties, Gafni said, "I don't believe this is realistic. There are very, very significant differences between us and the right-wing parties, and between us and the NRP. At present, the most we can talk about is a merger of all the hareidi parties."
Gafni is certainly consistent. In 1996, before the election that brought Binyamin Netanyahu to power, leaders of the National Religious Party, Shas, and Agudat Yisrael agreed in principle to form a united religious party front. However, MK Gafni, of what was then the Degel HaTorah party, explained that "deep ideological
differences" between his party and the others prevented it from joining the front.