How Does the Israeli Election Process Work?
Aired February 5, 2001 – 9:56 a.m. ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) LAURIE SAXE, PORTLAND, OREGON: My name is Laurie Saxe, from Portland, Oregon. And I would like to ask CNN to please explain the Israeli election process. JERROLD KESSEL, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Political scientists used to say that the problem with the Israeli electoral process was that it was too perfect. Because the Israelis had this absolute proportional-representation system, it meant that literally every vote counted. It didn’t, however, work in practice, simply because there were too many parties and all governments had to be formed out of coalitions. So two elections ago, they changed the system and they had two — a double-barreled election introduced; one the continuing election for the Parliament though the party system; and the other a direct election for the prime minister. The problem with this is, it didn’t really worked ei
