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7 Nisan 5766 - April 4, 2006 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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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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