The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Subcommittee
approved a bill by MK Rabbi Moshe Gafni to cancel the
possibility of signing surplus votes agreements between
parties. The Constitution Committee is scheduled to meet to
pass the subcommittee decision and to advance the bill to a
first reading.
Rabbi Gafni claims that the surplus votes agreements cause
numerous distortions, at times making it possible for a party
that wins more votes to receive fewer mandates than another
party that wins fewer votes but that gained another mandate
through a surplus votes agreement. Rabbi Gafni says the
current law distorts the voters' will and harms democracy.
As an example he cited the last Knesset elections in which
United Torah Jewry received more votes than the National
Religious Party, yet the NRP won six mandates thanks to a
surplus votes agreement it had signed with Am Echad, whereas
UTJ won only five. NRP thus got its sixth seat through the
votes that were cast for Am Echad, clearly not the will of
the voters.
At the subcommittee meeting Rabbi Gafni said that the Bader-
Ofer Agreement, which currently determines the distribution
of surplus votes, is the greatest distortion of all in the
election results and that he sees the cancellation of the
possibility of carrying out surplus agreements as the
beginning of the total repeal of the Bader-Ofer Law.
Since each seat requires a minimum number of votes, almost
every part has excess votes, meaning votes that cannot give
them a seat. For example, if the minimum number of votes per
seat is 50,000, then a party that got 140,000 votes will get
two seats and will have 40,000 surplus votes. The aggregate
of these surplus votes will be a certain number of seats
since the number of votes per seat is determined by the total
number of votes cast. The Bader-Ofer Law gives the current
method used to apportion these extra seats among the
parties.
