Hotovely retains 20th Likud spot after fresh recount
Ex-MK Avi Dichter loses by 101 votes after Supreme Court orders completion of recount, keeping him at 26th spot
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on Google
MK Tzipi Hotovely will be placed in the 20th spot on the Likud Knesset list, party officials announced Wednesday, after completing a second vote recount that will likely end an ongoing legal feud over the slot.
Avi Dichter, a former minister who came 101 votes shy of Hotovely, will be placed 26th on the list, considered out of range to reach the Knesset.
The count was resumed Tuesday night after the Supreme Court ordered the party to continue tallying the votes in dozens of polling stations around the country.
The recount began last week at the request of Dichter, who was moved down to the 26th slot earlier this month after a recount found that Hotovely received 36 more votes than he did, not several dozen fewer as set by the original count.
But on Monday, the Tel Aviv District Court accepted Hotovely’s petition to freeze the counting, ruling that the Likud Central Election Committee finding that Hotovely had beat out Dichter was binding.
The first recount came after some of the results for the two and for other candidates proved highly improbable. According to Channel 2, in Beit Jann, MK Tzachi Hanegbi received 250 votes — but only 197 Likud members had voted overall. Similarly, at one Jerusalem polling station, MK Yuli Edelstein received nearly 1,000 votes, more than the number of voters at the station.
Likud released its initial tally in the party primaries earlier this month, with Interior Minister Gilad Erdan and Knesset Speaker Edelstein taking top spots behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The party is expected to garner 22 to 24 seats, according to current polls.
Lazar Berman contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.