The Central Elections Committee will deploy drones to monitor from the air the lines at 751 special polling stations for the sick and quarantined, Central Elections Committee head Orly Ades said on Thursday.
If the drone handlers see that the lines are too long, voters will be sent to other special polling stations. Vans and taxis will take the sick and quarantined to vote.
Apart from easing lengthy waiting times on Tuesday at those special polling stations, four additional polling stations will be set up at Ben-Gurion Airport for returning Israelis wanting to vote. This is the first time that polling stations have been set up at the airport. Abroad, only Israelis who are official emissaries of the state are allowed to vote.
The decision to allow passengers to vote at the airport was made after the High Court of Justice ruled against extending the flight closure. Several thousand Israelis are expected to return for Election Day.
The polling booths will be placed in the terminal before passport control, and voting slips will be placed in double envelopes.
Ades said at the online news conference that the airport polling stations will allow those returning from abroad to cast their ballot before heading to quarantine. She said that the airport booths were not intended as a pilot experiment, were not setting a precedent, and would only be used for this election due to the special circumstances presented by the pandemic.
A total of 13,035 polling stations will be set up across the country, with the ballot slips counted at the Knesset and in special tents erected in the Knesset’s porches and parking lots.
Ades said regular votes would be counted by Wednesday, and the double-enveloped ballots cast at corona polling stations by emissaries, IDF soldiers and prisoners would be counted by Friday, ahead of the Passover holiday.