On January 31, 2015 there were special elections for the mayor of the city of Bat Yam after the previous mayor, Shlomi Lahiani – was suspended from his position. Yossi Bechar won by a margin of 491 votes.
Following the elections, the losing candidate, Eli Yariv, filed a motion with the District Court requesting that the Court order the cancellation of the election. The District Court granted the motion and established that in around 10 affairs there were revealed to be severe deficiencies, including the giving of an election bribe, and each of these impacted the results of the election: “Most of the discussion in the case related to the affairs mentioned above – the mall affair, the municipal prosecutor affair, the contractors affair, the employees of the municipality affair, the involvement of Lahiani, the Sharet school affair, the Shuvu school affair, (hereinafter also: the “Main Affairs”). For each of these affairs, the District Court reached the conclusion that they were significant and severe deficiencies that were at the core of the matter – the potential impact on the election results.”
In the framework of the appeal, it was argued that the District Court’s decision constituted a change of the Election Law, in a manner that cancels with a single blow a decades old case law tradition. In addition, it was argued that none of the affairs constituted an election deficiency and an impact on the results of the election was not proven for any affair as the law requires.
The Supreme Court granted the appeal and cancelled the District Court’s decision.
In an in depth decision, which reviewed each of the alleged affairs, the Supreme Court held, that except for one affair, none of them revealed an election deficiency that went to the core of the matter, and none of the affairs had the potential to impact the results of the election: “In summary – the municipal prosecutor affair was the only affair to reveal a deficiency going to the core of the matter… with that, as was clarified, the degree of the impact of this deficiency is estimated to be only on 10 votes. Due to the gap between the candidates (491 votes) – it is not enough to impact the result of the election.”
In summary, the decision established the following rules for the law of elections:
1. In order to cancel an election all of the votes that make up the gap between the candidates must be proven to be invalid, and not just half of the votes (until today this point was disputed);
2. There is an automatic right of appeal to the Supreme Court from decisions of the District Court in civil actions (as opposed to an administrative proceeding) on matters relating to elections ( until today there was no case law on this point.
3. An election promise, such as a promise not to raise the rate of property tax, does not constitute an election irregularity, even if the promisor did not intend to fulfill the promise or if he did not have the ability to fulfill it.
4. It is possible to invalidate votes in the “first circle”, i.e. the voters who received an election bribe for example, however, it is not possible to invalidate votes of people in the “second circle” (such as family and friends), except if there is concrete proof that the bribe also distorted their votes.
5. Activities of persuasion (or hanging signs) of people in the “first circle” cannot invalidate the votes of people in the “second circle”, so long that the people in the “first circle” did not bribe or threaten the people in the second circle.
