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NEWS
UTJ Leads the Way in Tracking Voters on Election
Day
by Betzalel Kahn
Bnei Brak Deputy Mayor Rabbi Yaakov Asher, who headed UTJ's
election campaign in his city, attributes the increase in the
number of UTJ votes to the unique working methods adopted in
these elections, including electronic voter tracking. After
every election the major parties study UTJ's technique of
tracking loyal supporters and other voters in every city.
The old system entailed filling out forms with the serial
number of every voter who went to the ballot and sending them
to the regional headquarters every hour. The data was then
fed into a computer, which notified election-day workers
which of the party's known supporters had not yet gone to the
ballot. Later the methodology was refined through the use of
bar codes. A UTJ representative at every polling place would
adhere a bar-code sticker for every voter who arrived and
headquarters workers would scan in the data.
In last week's elections UTJ tested a new method that
provides real-time updates of every voter. UTJ
representatives at every polling place in Bnei Brak were
equipped with special cell phones that blocked all incoming
and outgoing calls. The moment the ballot chairman announced
the serial number of the voter the UTJ representative would
enter the number into the cell phone and, at the touch of a
button, send it to Netvision's central computer in Haifa,
which then instantly relayed it to the central party
headquarters in Bnei Brak. Thus throughout Election Day party
workers knew who had voted and who needed encouragement to go
out and vote.
The major parties and even the Central Election Committees
are likely to adopt this technique in the next elections to
determine the true voter turnout at any given moment (until
now media reports on voter turnout were based on exit polls
at several hundred polling places) and to see who has voted
and who has not.
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