Ballot battlefield takes shape as sides tussle over voters homebound and homeward bound

Stav Levaton is a military reporter for The Times of Israel

Cypriots driving past Larnaca Airport last month were greeted by an unusual sight: a political campaign billboard, despite the country’s parliamentary elections having concluded in May. Even more striking, the signs featured neither a Cypriot politician nor any message in one of Cyprus’s official languages. Instead, the face looking down on the cars speeding past was that of Gadi Eisenkot, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main rival in the upcoming elections, alongside a Hebrew message specifically addressed to Israeli vacationers.

The unprecedented play for Israeli votes outside of Israel was more than a novel election tactic, experts say. It also offered an early glimpse into what could become one of the most unconventional and consequential election campaigns in Israel’s history, with the electoral process itself increasingly emerging as a political battleground.

Eisenkot’s overseas campaign is only one front in a broader struggle taking place over ballot box access for voters occupying a number of usually little-considered niches, as parties scramble for whatever advantage they can find in a race that could turn on razor-thin margins.

With elderly Israelis and those residing abroad seen as more likely to lean toward center-left parties, battles are taking shape over polling stations in elderly care homes and around expats’ ability to fly back to vote. There are also disputes cropping up around transportation for voters inside the country and concerns regarding voter intimidation, turning Israel’s ability to hold free and fair election from a fact into a question.

The October 27 ballot is “perhaps one of the most consequential elections in [Israel’s] history,” said Yael Shomer, an associate professor in the School of Political Science, Government and International Affairs at Tel Aviv University and a researcher at The Israel National Election Studies (INES).

“In previous elections, the main questions were usually who would govern, which coalition would be formed, and what policies it would pursue,” Shomer explained. “This time, for many Israelis, the election is also about the future character of the political system itself.”

According to Assaf Shapira, head of the Israel Democracy Institute’s Political Reform Program, the growing number of political battles over Israel’s electoral system reflects a broader trend of polarization and populism.

“You see increasing attacks on the Central Elections Committee… by representatives or Knesset members or journalists identified with the right-wing bloc,” Shapira noted. “You don’t believe the authorities of the state. You think that they are supporters of a specific political bloc.”

The CEC, headed by Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, is supposed to act as the state’s electoral referee, but Shapira and other critics see comments calling the body’s fairness into question as part of a delegitimization campaign that could ultimately lead to electoral results being challenged.

Sitting beside Sohlberg during a recent Knesset subcommittee meeting, Likud MK Boaz Bismuth criticized the CEC and questioned appointments that some right-wing lawmakers claimed reflected political bias or improper ties to opposition figures.

According to Shapira, an increasingly prevalent view of political opponents as “enemies” is fueling suspicions on both sides that their rivals will not “respect the electoral process” and “the integrity of the election,” in turn leading to more arguments regarding election procedures.

Concerns over election integrity are also being taken seriously by senior figures meant to be insulated from politics.

Last month, President Isaac Herzog said that he, Sohlberg and Shin Bet chief David Zini were committed to “ensuring the integrity of the election,” warning that there were “many elements seeking to sabotage from within, and especially from the outside,” though he did not elaborate.

Eisenkot’s unusual campaign strategy was apparently aimed at Israelis traveling abroad for their summer holidays, according to Liron Lavi of Bar-Ilan University’s political studies department. Cyprus, she said, was an obvious choice for such a campaign. Some 590,000 Israelis visited the island in 2025 alone, according to the Ynet new outlet citing the Cyprus Tourism Ministry’s representative office in Israel.

A spokesperson for Eisenkot confirmed to The Times of Israel that the billboards were part of the Yashar party’s official campaign, adding that the initiative may expand to other foreign countries, without providing further details.

Lavi pointed to Greece as a possible next destination for the campaign, since, like Cyprus, it is close geographically to Israel and a popular destination among Israeli tourists.

However, she noted that other, more distant nations may also be eligible for consideration, such as the United States, which boasts one of the world’s largest communities of Israeli expats.

“It’s very unusual to launch a campaign abroad because Israelis who live abroad cannot vote [from outside the country],” Lavi said. In lieu of absentee voting, Israeli expatriates can travel to Israel to cast their ballots.

Although Israelis have long flown home to vote, experts say the scale of this year’s expected expatriate turnout is unprecedented.

The predicted jump is seen as driven in part by a surge in emigration since the last election, which researchers say was at least partly fueled by the war and political tensions, a shift from previous years in which most of those leaving were thought to have done so for economic reasons.

“There is now an unusually large number of Israeli citizens living or temporarily residing abroad, including many who left after October 7 and during the subsequent war,” Shomer explained. “They are disproportionately young, educated and secular, characteristics that are often associated with centrist or opposition voting.”

In 2025, nearly 50,000 Israelis left the country for more than 12 months, continuing a record-setting wave of emigration that started in 2023, according to a recent study at Tel Aviv University.

The growing number of Israelis living abroad who remain eligible to vote has prompted several nongovernmental organizations to launch initiatives aimed at helping expatriates return home for election day. One such initiative is the America Israel Democracy (AID) Coalition’s FLY&VOTE program, which “has registered more than 25,000 Israelis and aims to assist as many as 50,000 in returning to vote,” according to Shomer.

“People are prepared to spend substantial amounts of money, take time away from work or university, and travel thousands of kilometers simply to cast one ballot,” she said. “It suggests that they do not regard this as an ordinary choice between competing governments, but as a decision about Israel’s future political and democratic direction.”

These nonpartisan programs were largely created to assist Israeli expatriates with navigating the logistical and bureaucratic hurdles of voting while living abroad, with some even organizing charter flights as part of their initiatives. Participants are still required to pay for their own travel fees, making the programs legal under Israeli law.

That has not stopped members of the coalition from allegedly trying to prevent the forecasted wave of expatriates from voting in the upcoming election, a scenario they see as a threat to their chances of winning.

Senior officials in Likud Transportation Minister Miri Regev’s office have reportedly discussed ways to limit the number of flights coming into Ben Gurion Airport in the days leading up to the election, in order to thwart the arrival of voters for parties opposed to Netanyahu. And Israelis living overseas have told Ynet that they have had trouble confirming their voter eligibility.

“If [the reports are] true, it certainly will be an attack on the right to vote, on the electoral integrity,” Shapira said.

In response to the allegations, a Likud spokesperson claimed that organizations helping expats get to Israel for the vote were targeting only those more likely to vote against parties in the current coalition and were funding the flights, both of which are illegal.

“We’re talking about a system of millions of dollars, most of which is coming from abroad, meant to interfere in Israel’s election, which is against the law, creating external war chests operating outside campaign finance laws,” the spokesperson charged.

The issue carries echoes of a 2019 dispute regarding a CEC decision to bar a nonprofit from operating buses to transport Bedouin voters to polling stations, ruling that it had not registered as an election-related organization. Civil rights groups criticized the ruling, arguing it disproportionately affected Bedouin citizens living in remote Negev communities with little or no access to public transportation and effectively suppressed their turnout.

Shapira said such initiatives occupy a legal gray area, as Israeli law prohibits nongovernmental organizations from funding transportation to polling stations if they are promoting a particular political agenda or targeting a specific segment of the electorate.

“Bedouins and other such populations have to rely on public transportation, or to reach polling stations privately,” he said.

Bringing polling stations to voters, rather than the other way around, has also become a flashpoint ahead of the election.

In June, Netanyahu’s coalition controversially prevented the continued placement of polling booths in retirement or assisted-living facilities. Critics alleged that the move was aimed at suppressing ballots from older voters, who are seen are more likely to support opposition parties.

“Available polling generally indicates that younger Israelis are more right-wing than older Israelis, and some of the affected facilities house large numbers of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, a population historically associated with Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu,” Shomer noted.

Israel first began putting polling stations in retirement facilities for the 2021 Knesset election, as part of efforts to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. While nursing homes, like hospitals, prisons and army bases, have special procedures for absentee balloting, no such mechanism had been available to those in non-nursing old-age homes.

The measure was repeated in the most recent election, in late 2022, for old-age homes housing at least 75 people.

The Central Elections Committee recommended to Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee head Simcha Rothman that the legislation regulating the next election should permanently enshrine the placement of polling booths in retirement facilities, with civil servants and community activists citing the measure’s success in boosting the elderly voting rate and expanding access to those with decreased mobility.

However, the proposal was ultimately shot down, with MK Amit Halevi, a committee member from Netanyahu’s Likud party, arguing that erecting special polling places for residents of old-age homes would discriminate against mobility-challenged elderly voters who can’t afford to live in such facilities.

“Sources” quoted by Ynet claimed that Likud’s opposition to the old-age polling booths was “based on a stereotype” that opposition party Yisrael Beytenu stood to gain from the measure.

Yael Rosenfeld, one of a group of people who sought petitioned the High Court for the voting booths to be reinstated, told the outlet that the “heartless decision raises suspicions that it’s being driven by political considerations and not coming from professionals who are focused on the good of the public.”

Shomer noted that the suspicions did not “conclusively prove that the provision was removed in order to suppress opposition votes.”

“Nevertheless, removing an established arrangement that made voting substantially easier for people with limited mobility has a suppressive effect regardless of the motive behind it,” she said.

There are also concerns that past attempts at measures allegedly aimed at voter suppression may be repeated, though there has yet to be any credible evidence of that.

Some of these concerns revolve around cameras installed at polling stations, particularly in Arab communities, which had been presented as an anti-fraud measure but widely pilloried by critics as an attempt to intimidate potential Arab voters with the threat that they would be surveilled.

Likud first rolled out cameras in April 2019, arming party representatives assigned to monitor ballot stations with hidden devices, a fact that only became public toward the end of voting day.

When Israelis returned to the polls later that year, the CEC ruled that parties were not allowed to surveil polling stations with their own cameras. Instead, it dispatched its own camera-toting monitors to polling stations where irregularities were suspected.

A day before the September vote, Likud made known that it had installed dozens of cameras outside polling stations in Arab cities, in a move critics charged was aimed at intimidating voters.

“Party representatives might attempt a similar operation again on election day and force the Central Elections Committee to respond in real time,” Shomer warned.

Yet it’s unclear what effect, if any, the camera gambit had on Arab turnout. In April, fewer than 50% of eligible Arab voters cast ballots, though it may have had more to do with disaffection following the breakup of the Joint List of Arab parties than the cameras, which were hidden away for at least part of voting day.

In September, when the use of cameras was known, turnout rose to over 59%, with over four-fifths voting for the reconstituted Joint List. Turnout rose again when elections were repeated in 2020, even though the CEC further expanded its use of cameras at polling stations.

Beyond alleged voter suppression, questions are also coming to the fore over efforts aimed at maximizing turnout. In a recent ruling, Sohlberg banned polling workers and party observers from sharing information about who had voted, a longstanding practice that has been utilized mainly by right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties to craft get-out-the-vote campaigns on election day itself targeting certain areas or demographics.

The fights over how the election is being run comes as Israelis appear to be losing faith in the country’s democratic character and ability to hold an honest vote.

Nearly three-quarters of Jewish Israelis are concerned over the integrity of the 2026 election, and only 43 percent are optimistic about the future of democratic rule, according to the Israel Democracy Institute’s July 2026 Israeli Voice Index.

Some experts have warned that attacks against the Central Elections Committee by Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party could potentially presage a challenge to the results of the election.

“In Israel, the politicization of election administration is not merely an accidental consequence of polarization. It is becoming one of the current government’s major political projects,” Shomer said. “The Central Elections Committee is increasingly being placed in the same rhetorical category as the Supreme Court, the attorney general, and the professional civil service: institutions portrayed by government supporters as components of an unelected ‘deep state’ that obstructs the will of the right.”

Both Shomer and Lavi believe that many of the Israelis who have emigrated in recent years did so because of the ruling government, but that many may return in the event of a leadership change in the upcoming elections.

“They haven’t moved permanently. They moved for now because it became too hard to live in Israel,” Lavi said. “But if things will get better they would like to come back.”

Shomer argued that the stakes extend well beyond the direct outcome of the October vote. She warned that if the current coalition remains in power and continues pursuing its institutional agenda, the recent wave of emigration could accelerate.

“This election is not merely a competition between alternative governments. It is an election about the rules of government, the independence of the institutions that hold power accountable, Israel’s relationship with its closest allies, and, ultimately, what kind of country Israel will be after the votes are counted,” she said.

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