Outside vote count, Meretz accuses UTJ of trying to ‘steal’ their Knesset seat

Tamar Zandberg, the leader of the left-wing Meretz party, accuses the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism of trying to “steal” votes from Meretz.

Dror Morag, the party’s representative at the Central Elections Committee says that while he has not been allowed into the room to view the vote counting, he saw representatives of UTJ inside.

A spokesperson for the elections committee denies a UTJ representative was present.

Zandberg says the party is receiving reports of political intervention in the vote counting process.

“There’s a seat that is supposed to be the fifth seat for Meretz and at the moment we’re getting reports that United Torah Judaism is trying to apply political pressure for that seat to go to them and not to Meretz.”

“We’ve asked members of the public to report anything that seemed odd. We’re getting reports about polling stations [whose votes] have disappeared… about all sorts of inconsistencies between the votes recorded and what was put on the website.”

She claims that during October’s local elections in Tel Aviv, UTJ — running together with Jewish Home — took a seat that had been registered in Meretz’s favor through forgery in a case that is still being investigated by the police.

— Sue Surkes