We Won

The long-awaited election day for the mayor of Jerusalem finally arrived last Tuesday. For several years I have been volunteering for Meretz, my party of choice, on election day. Usually I serve at a polling station registering voters as they come in, together with a board of two other party representatives and an official from the board of elections. The remaining parties often have observers present, so everyone can ensure that the voting is done according to the rules. This year I asked for the vice secretary position because the head has to accompany the official to city hall to turn over the ballot box. This is done after all the votes have been counted, late at night, and I had to get up early for work the next morning. I had the last shift, from 6-10 pm, including the count after the polls closed.

I was assigned to a poll at a school in Givat Massua, a largely secular new nightborhood on the southwestern edge of the city. When I arrived at 6, many parents with young children were waiting on line to vote, a good sign. I presented my credentials to the board of elections official, a stunningly beautiful young woman named Natalie who had just recently finished her army service and was earning a handsome salary for this one-day stint. Turned out that Natalie was not the sharpest tool in the shed. The other two party reps at the table, also very young, were more interested in keeping records for their own parties than running the show according to the rules and Natalie wasn't laying down the law. When a twelfth grader with short hair presented his ID, where he had long hair, Natalie assured him, "You look much better now." While she went out for a smoke, a man came in, presented his ID and almost voted when I realized he was not on our list, because he was at the wrong polling station. When Natalie came back I asked her to call out the voters' names in order to ensure we had the right person but she ignored me (the end result was a descrepancy of ten voters between the lists because of the chaos).

The seventeen-year old from the right-wing National Union seemed to think he was at a student council meeting, suggesting frequently that we discard the protocol and just do things the quick way. Another young man with strawberry blonde pais, from the ultras, replaced him for a while and seemed to take things a bit more seriously. Watching from the side were two observers: the Shas guy, a tall, gangly university student who wasn't even wearing a kippa, with whom I enjoyed a surprisingly enlightened discussion on the Jewish roots of democracy during a lull; and Arcady Gaydamak's rep, a kid named Shlomi right out of central casting. Dressed in tight jeans with a wide leather belt, a gold earring and sporting longish hair, he was the classic image of what we used to call a chach chach, better known in my kids' generation as an arse. (I caught him and Natalie about to light up their cigarettes in the room after we closed the poll and sent them you-know-where.)

A crisis erupted when Edna, the woman in charge of all the polling stations in the school, came around to ask who was going with Natalie to city hall after we finished counting. "I can't, my brother's in the hospital," said the third member of the board, a ditzy law student from Nir Barkat's party. "I'm not going," declared Matan the 17 year-old, "I have to be at school at 7:30 tomorrow." I'd be damned if they stuck me with that job. "You're the head," I told Matan. "It's your job to go." He proceeded to throw a tantrum. I tried to explain to him that he had been given a responsibility with his position but it was like a teacher trying to convince a ninth-grader to stay after school - the kid couldn't have cared less about the responsibility. Since there was no one else, I reluctantly volunteered to go.

When it came time to count the votes, Natalie fell apart. Despite clearly-written instuctions from the board of elections about what to do, she was helpless. Luckily, Edna read the situation and showed up to run the show. We had to open and count 580 envelopes for the mayor and 580 envelopes for the city council. Everyone pitched in to get the job done with a surprising esprit de corps, considering what a bunch of jerks most of them had been earlier in the evening. Even Shlomi helped open envelopes, although after a while he got bored and put on his sunglasses. "Where did they find you?" I asked him.

Not surprisingly, Nir Barkat took this station by a landslide. My party, Meretz, did very well too, so well that 17 and blond pais began making cracks about the friggin' liberals (smolanim maniakim) every time a Meretz vote was registered. (Later on blond pais smiled at me and apologized if he had hurt my feelings.) In the end, the ditzy law student whose brother was in the hospital discovered her boyfriend was going to city hall with another polling station, so she volunteered to go and I was off the hook. I still got home at 2 am.

I'm thrilled to report that the ultra-orthodox candidate for mayor of Jerusalem was defeated by Nir Barkat, thanks to the fact that secular Jerusalemites took the time and trouble to vote, which typically hasn't been the case in the past. I think that many people realized the dire situation ahead if the city remained in religious hands for another five years. Barkat is still a question mark but hopefully he will not disappoint - I will be keeping tabs on him.