The second mayoral election in Beit Shemesh is now behind us happily. The result was the same as the last time: Incumbent mayor Moshe Abutbul again won a narrow victory over Eli Cohen after the Jerusalem district court ordered new elections based on voter fraud in the October contest.
At one level Abutbul’s repeat victory may be a good thing for all citizens of Beit Shemesh. Had the two elections led to different results the acrimony surrounding the two campaigns would have continued to fester endlessly. Now at least supporters of Cohen have solid evidence that the Abutbul’s first victory was not the result of voter fraud. And supporters of Abutbul can stop worrying that the Israeli judicial system wrongfully intervened to deprive their candidate of the fruits of victory.
Ironically Kalman Liebskind the investigative journalist who first broke the story of the fraudulent use of identity documents in the first Beit Shemesh election agrees with the claim of Mayor Abutbul’s supporters that the court erred in ordering new elections. In a lengthy article published just before the second elections he concludes “It is hard to believe that there is another group other than the chareidi public with respect to which a court would have felt free to cancel an election victory on the basis of such weak proofs.” (Liebskind begins his lengthy analysis of the evidence of fraud before the district court by identifying himself as a religious Zionist who is interested in Beit Shemesh remaining a diverse city and who hopes that Eli Cohen will win.)
Of the total number of identification documents discovered by the police only 36 were used to vote in the first election. Those 36 known fraudulent votes represent a small fraction of Abutbul’s 956-vote margin of victory in the October race.
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