By GIL HOFFMANKnesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein and new Central Elections Committee chairman, Supreme Court Judge Neal Hendel(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein said he was sorry that Israel was going to its third election in under a year on Wednesday at the inaugural meeting of the Central Elections Committee at the Knesset.Edelstein recalled that when he spoke to the Central Elections Committee's inaugural meeting for the September 17 election, he said the second election would not significantly change the makeup of the Knesset and that he was sure there would not be a third election.He said that in retrospect that he wished he was right about there not being a third election and right in saying the second election would not change anything.Central Elections Committee director-general Orly Ades said her committee needed to urgently check every polling station in the days ahead, because schools are closed during Hanukkah for eight days in the Jewish sector and in the Arab sector for two weeks.Central Elections Committee director-general Orly Ades (Credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)She revealed a new rule requiring heads of polling stations to be 21 years old and party representatives at polling stations to be at least 17.The new Central Elections Committee chairman, Supreme Court Judge Neal Hendel, quoted Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, saying that voting is a mitzvah like eating bitter herbs. He joked that since his one-year-old grandaughter was born, there have been three elections, so if she lived until age 120, she will see 360.Hendel was born in New York and attended the Yeshivah of Flatbush and New York University.
