I'm an activist for #TheIsraeliDemocracts – #הדמוקרטים – a liberal, Zionist and democratic party in #Israel . We are about to have primary elections for the party on Jul 20th and I'd like to give an overview on primary elections in Israel.

Elections in Israel are nationwide and proportional representation - parties present their list of candidates and each voter may elect a single party (technically it's a list, which is a combination of parties, but never mind that). And no registration is required.

Up until the 1970s, party leaders chose those lists of candidates through committees - "the elders of the party". In 1977 the #Likkud started electing people in party conferences. A while later other parties followed suit. In 1991 the Labor decided to use an even wider body: primary elections. In both cases the new format helped the party win the elections as the older method seemed corrupt.

Primary elections became the norm. Then Tommy Lapid (the father of Yair Lapid) became disenchanted with that idea after it helped kicking hime out of "his" Shinuy party in 2006 in an ugly way. This prompted Yair Lapid to avoid it altogether. Yair Lapid created his own new party in 2012 (Yesh Atid), with himself as the big party boss. And from that point, new parties tended to be "owned" by the figure that headed the party and called the shots.

In previous elections only Labor and Meretz (sort of) on the left and Likkud on the right stuck to holding primary elections. Meretz and Labor merged to forming The Democrats that will hold the primary elections for the list in July 20th.

The primary elections in the Likkud have an aura of corruption around them: workers in various large companies are "strongly encouraged" to join the party. Likewise various political movements, notably from the religious far right (often people who actually don't vote Likkud) will join the party to vote in the primary elections.

On the other hand, primary elections remain a useful channel to keep party leadership accountable to local activists. E.g. recently farmers (including ones supported by Likkud) managed to thwart a suggested milk reform (That was probably badly designed anyway).

However, Netanyahu is not so fond of those primary elections, as it means that there are people noot directly depending on him, and currently trying to select less list members in primary elections.

That is certainly not the case with the Democrats.

I'll note that there was at least one more small party that selected its list through what is described as primary elections: the Reservists (Miluimnikim), that currently fail to pass the voting threshold in polls.

#PrimaryElections #ilpol