Yamina MK Abir Kara questioned by police over Knesset double vote

Yamina MK Abir Kara was questioned by police on Monday after he was caught casting an illegal double vote in the Knesset last year.

The lawmaker was interrogated under caution by the Lahav 433 anti-corruption unit at its headquarters in Lod as part of an ongoing probe.

The incident occurred last July during a plenum vote on a bill limiting unemployment benefits.

Kara has maintained that the double vote was an innocent mistake. Kara, a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, said at the time that he had accidentally voted from the computer of fellow Yamina MK Idit Silman.

“I voted from the wrong computer of my friend who sits next to me, out of instinct, and it was a mistake,” Kara tweeted then. “The important thing is that I admitted immediately to the error. And by the way, the coalition had a majority on the bill anyway.”

The coalition easily won the vote, so Kara’s double vote did not change the outcome, but the deputy minister could not have known that definitively in advance, making the final tally irrelevant to the police’s decision.

There is no indication that Kara had ever double-voted in the past. A source in the Knesset told Channel 13 last July that if no other such instances are discovered, Kara is unlikely to face criminal charges.

Former Likud MK Yehiel Hazan — the father of former Likud MK Oren Hazan — double voted in the Knesset in 2003 and was sentenced to four months of community service and a six-month suspended prison term. However, unlike Kara, Hazan refused to admit to the offense despite video evidence, and later attempted to tamper with the evidence. Hazan remained in the Knesset for his full term, and was not reelected in 2006.