Election authorities report several incidents of violence at polling stations

Central Elections Committee director general Orly Ades says there have been several incidents of violence at polling stations.

In Taibe, an Arab city in central Israel, there have been reports of furniture being thrown. The regional elections committee is dealing with the incident together with the police, she says.

In northern Israel, in the area of the Krayot suburbs of Haifa, one voter threatened an official. The incident was filmed and dealt with, Ades says.

Similarly, in Carmiel in northern Israel and in Rehovot in the center of the country, voters behaved violently towards election committee members and were dealt with by police.

There are also further incidents of voting irregularities.

In the northern city of Acre, a woman tried to vote with someone else’s identity document. This too was caught on film by a supervisor and the police intervened.

In one case of a voter complaining that his name had been crossed off when he arrived, it transpired that there were two voters called Itay Cohen, and when the first one voted, the name of the second one was crossed off by mistake. With the discovery of the error in the Jezreel Valley in the north of the country, both Itay Cohens have now voted, according to Ades.

She adds that despite requests earlier in the day for able-bodied people not to vote at special polling stations for those with mobility problems, the latter are still experiencing long queues. The Central Elections Committee is trying to open additional rooms in buildings where the problems are acute in order to ease the pressure.