Tomorrow Israel goes to the polls. The outcome will apparently depend on whether some party or parties fails to reach the threshold of 3.25 percent. Such failure in the present election threatens to simply waste the votes of people who want to keep Netanyahu out of power, for the parties in that danger are of the Israeli left and of the Arab Israelis.
Keeping Netanyahu out of power is important for the protection of Israeli democracy in some of the same ways that keeping Trump out of power is important for the protection of American democracy. (At the least, Netanyahu and his allies threaten to undermine the independence of the judiciary, for Netanyahu’s main goal right now is to keep himself out of jail, which means escaping from his trials for various forms of corruption.)
What a shame if thousands of people, who cast votes for parties that fail to reach the 3.25% percent threshold, will be effectively voiceless in determining such a crucial outcome.
And such disenfranchisement because of the threshold seems totally unnecessary: why not have voters indicate which party they’d like to get their vote if their first choice falls short of the 3.25 percent?
Rank choice voting of that kind is already practiced in some jurisdictions in America. And it should be the wave of the future— for it would be a solution to the THIRD PARTY PROBLEM. Without rank-choice voting, Americans who vote for a third party candidate are usually effectively helping the side they most oppose. Thus the people who voted for Ralph Nader for President in 2000 handed the election to George W. Bush, because the Nader votes were mute on the choice between Bush and Gore in Florida, whereas the great majority of Nader voters would have preferred Gore, and their support would have made Gore President, sparing the United States and the world the disaster of the Iraq War.
Israel, without any such rank-choice provision, is now witnessing some strange politicking, with Arab parties appealing to Jewish voters to make sure that the Arab parties hit the 3.25 threshold. But that’s quite iffy, whereas if people who truly favor the Arab parties are able to designate the recipients of their support in the event that their party doesn’t make it, that would make sure that in the big choice they face — will Netanyahu again run the Israeli government — their preference will register.