Israel's voting system – the actual, mechanical part of how people vote – is terrible. There's no ballot paper. At the polling station, each voter is given a voting envelope and walks to the booth, where they're faced with this:
Each party has its own slip, represented by a couple of letters. To vote, you put the slip of your chosen party in the envelope, and the envelope in the voting box.
Why the weird system? Partly because before widespread literacy, voters needed to remember which party they were voting for. Today perhaps they'd use symbols or logos instead. But the system had a more problematic purpose too:
You can bring your own voting slip! So back in the day, employers would just hand out voting slips to their workers. Heads of big families or mayors would hand out slips too. The system was designed to facilitate this behaviour.
The system causes huge problems today. First, *any voter can touch all the slips*. People steal slips of rival parties, or hide them, or sabotage them by sticking slips from different parties together, making the vote invalid.

Secondly, it makes vote counting take longer, as the counters have to open the envelopes.
Finally, it's immensely wasteful. Even the most minor party that gets a few hundred votes needs millions of slips, using loads of paper. A line on a single ballot would be much easier.
I don't know why the system hasn't been replaced by a single ballot by now. Probably just sentimentalism.
Several replies tell me that France and Spain use this system too. Why??

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Arieh Kovler

Arieh Kovler Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @ariehkovler

18 Mar
Wow. The far-right website Veterans Today is run by the Russian security services, according to US officials. That's huge. newsy.com/stories/u-s-ve…
Veterans Today was founded in 2003. It's accused Israel of being behind 9/11, hosted antisemites and conspiracy theorists for years. I'd call it far right, though it also pushes far-left conspiracies too.
VT's editor told @SashaIngber that the site is under investigation and that he's suspected of being a Russian agent, which he denies.
Read 6 tweets
17 Mar
How is QAnon handling Trump's call on Fox to get vaccinated? One major QAnon Telegram channel is pushing the message that Trump didn't mean it, he's only playing along to expose the pharma companies.
This message is... not popular. "How many will die because they believe every word out of trump's mouth?" says one antivax QAnoner, unironically. "Trump would not tell us to do this", says another.
That logic is taken further by QAnon influencer GhostEzra: Trump *didn't* say to take the vaccine, because it wasn't really Trump in the interview. Anyway, don't listen to Trump even if it is him, listen to Lin Wood(!). "Vaccines" is code for arrests.
Read 6 tweets
16 Mar
The tl;dr of the US Intel report into 2020 election meddling:

1. Russia tried to help Trump and smear Biden.
2. Iran tried to hurt Trump.
3. China sat this one out.
4. Other countries tried minor interference
5. Nobody messed with voting tallies

dni.gov/files/ODNI/doc…
The report again notes that one of the key Russian election influence campaigns was run by Andriy Derkach, who fed anti-Biden smears to Trump's personal lawyer, Rudi Giuliani.
Russia both smeared Biden and boosted Trump. Iran tried to damage Trump but didn't promote Biden.
Read 5 tweets
15 Mar
"Artificial brainwaves" could help cure stroke and other neuro diseases. An RCT showed stroke patients who used the electromagnetic treatment recovered faster and better, to the point that they could resume normal life. timesofisrael.com/study-of-25-st…
The therapy was developed by @BrainQTech and is delivered by a wearable device that's worn like a crown. Full disclosure: I worked with the company to present the findings of this research.
The device delivers patterns of EM radiation derived from brainwaves, and it seems to trigger the nervous system's self-repair mechanisms.
Read 6 tweets
8 Mar
Two QAnon factions arguing between:

1.Oprah had an ankle-monitor (meaning she's under arrest for child murder crimes)
2. The whole interview was CGI and she's really been executed, but the CGI people made it look like Oprah has an ankle monitor anyway.
The channel run by more 'traditional' QAnon influencers IET and AwakenedOutlaw is warning against the CGI theory. Why? Because they're losing ground to the wilder stuff by people like GhostEzra.
GhostEzra says Biden is a body-double who works for Trump, and the Dems and celebs are body doubles or CGI fakes. His Telegram channel has 228k members, up from 125k just three weeks ago. That's more than the channel IET, AO and the others share.

Read 5 tweets
8 Mar
Yet another kindergarten in my street is back in Covid isolation, with all the kids required to quarantine for 10 days, due to an unvaccinated substitute TA. This is the 3rd or 4th time a kindergarten on my street has had an infected staff member since 16 Feb.
At this point, most parents are vaccinated, but the kindergartners need to be quarantined and someone has to stay home with them.
In theory, people can quarantine in a single room, but this is hard or impossible for young kids, so whole households go into quarantine instead. A few of my friends have sent their other kids to live with relatives so they can go to school.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!