UPDATE: Nir Barkat wins Jerusalem

Once again the Israeli municipal elections have produced a very low turnout. Only 55% of eligible voters cast their ballots. That’s lower than in previous years, and much lower than the first few decades of the country’s history. That means only half of eligible voters voted, and the rest of the country didn’t.

Why is voter turnout so low? Polls open at 7AM and close at 10PM. Ample time to get out of bed, do yoga, make breakfast for the kids, take them to school, get through traffic to work, work all day, pick up the kids from school, take them to art, dance, karate class, go home make them dinner, pick them up from gymnastics, feed them, finish paperwork you didn’t get to at the office, and then go vote.

But seriously, do Israelis just not care about what happens in their cities? I think they do, but perhaps not enough to go out to a polling station and vote. Perhaps they’re too busy at work, or just too busy at life to go and vote. Some people just haven’t been following all the campaigns and don’t know who to vote for – so they just stay away. Some don’t think their vote counts for anything. Some just drive past the polling stations, see no open parking spots, and move on.

Also, it feels like the Israeli system is rigged. The secular work all day, and then after work they have to make the time to go vote. So many of them either can’t make the time or don’t bother. The vast majority of ultra-Orthodox do not work, so can spend the day voting, organizing, and getting other people to the polling stations.

Regardless of the results, what is certain is that all the campaigns have not moved the public, even in such critical cities such as Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, where the elections will, to a large degree, determine the direction the cities will move in. Despite constant pleas by all the candidates, Israeli voters, once again did not come to the polls. So maybe the polls should come to the voter.

I think that we need to see the a much more pervasive use of technology to bring the polls to the voter, not the other way around. There’s technology everywhere, so why don’t we use it for this most important of civic duties?

What I don’t understand is why we can’t vote over cellular phones or over the internet. We already buy and sell things online through secure payment technologies, so why can’t we vote through the same systems? We already vote for our favorites on A Star is Born [American Idol] through SMS and the system for that works. So why can’t we find the technologies to make secure remote voting work?

And why stop there? Why not vote anywhere there is a touch-screen and wireless internet? There are plenty of touch-screens in shopping malls – they could be hooked up with software that allows people to access a voting system through the Central Elections Commission. The malls can be made wireless hotspots. What about bank ATMs? You could, theoretically, vote there too, while at the same time withdrawing cash. And what about gyms? So many people running on the treadmills – why not hook them up to the net so people could vote while they jog? And talking about touch screens, what about those screens at restaurants that the waiters and waitresses work on all the time? The restaurant staff could vote from them, and so could the clients. By the way, that GPS machine in your car is hooked up to a computerized system – a very powerful one, so you could technically vote in your car. In addition, we choose which shows to watch and record through our TVs, so I see no reason why we can’t vote through them too. Imagine the voter turnout in Israel if people could vote through their TVs!

Watch how the whole system changes if people could just get emails and mms and sms messages with brief, clear outlines of who the candidates are, what their platforms are, and what they plan to do if elected. Then all you’d have to do is click on the person you want and press SEND.