Florida voters in Israel look on in amazement

As their absentee ballots float through the airmail ether, American Jews abroad are thrilled at how significant their votes might be.

By Flore de Préneuf

Nov 13, 2000 | Debra Inbar, a resident of Israel's coastal city of Haifa, had never voted in a U.S. election until this November when she punched out and mailed an absentee ballot. She is one of Israel's roughly 3,000 Florida voters, and they might hold the key to deciding who will be America's next president.

"Who knew that my vote would be so important?" giddily asks Inbar, a 42-year-old executive secretary in a high-tech firm.

In the Bush-Gore tug of war over Florida, much is being made of absentee ballots mailed from Israel, since more than 80 percent of American voters who live in Israel reliably root for the Democratic candidate.

"We're past excited. We're stunned. We've been working so hard for the past 20 years and we feel we've just hit the jackpot," says Bryna Franklin, a volunteer in the Israel chapter of Democrats Abroad. "The votes coming out of here could determine the gap between Bush and Gore."

But like many of the questions hanging over the Florida count, the question of whether late absentee ballots can tip the balance in favor of Gore is still unanswered. Who knows how many absentee ballots postmarked by Nov. 7, floating in the airmail ether, will crop up before Nov. 17?

The number of Floridians who voted from Israel is also in doubt. The Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel says there are about 4,000 registered voters here from Florida. Eliyahu Weinstein, the country chairman of Republicans Abroad, believes the number is closer to 2,000. This year the requests for absentee ballots were at a record high as the race whipped up the mostly Democratic American Jews who live in Israel. But there is no way of knowing how many of the requested ballots were actually mailed.

Weinstein also points out that Florida sends out 30,000 absentee ballots around the world and that most of these go to servicemen and corporate transfers who tend to vote Republican. Israel's staunchly Democratic votes could be drowned in a sea of Republican sentiment.

And then there's the Palm Beach County factor.

Inbar, who mailed her vote to West Palm Beach, was as confused as resident voters by the county's peculiar butterfly ballot. "It wasn't user friendly. The holes were very close together. I really had to concentrate and go over the numbers," she says.

To make matters worse, Inbar received two ballots in separate envelopes, one yellow, the other bright pink. She went for the yellow and discarded the pink. "I thought one vote would be enough," says Inbar, who now questions whether she made the right choice. She doesn't suspect fraud. "I think it's a mix-up from West Palm Beach."

People in Israel are watching the Florida contest with both excitement and nervous wonder. "It's beyond understanding that a country like America should have such a foul-up. It's not a banana republic," complains Johanna Kellner, a 76-year-old housewife living in Jerusalem. As for the misplaced ballot boxes, she says, "I can't believe it! I wonder whether it has anything to do with Jeb Bush being governor of Florida."

At the same time, she doesn't dismiss the election saga as just another entertaining piece of foreign news. Kellner has voted in every U.S. presidential election since she left Miami in 1969 because she feels that America and Israel are exceptionally close. "America is one of our few friends in the world," she says.

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