{"id":598941,"date":"2026-08-28T19:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T19:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/598941\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T19:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T19:34:11","slug":"israeli-expats-push-for-voting-rights-in-october-27-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/598941\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli expats push for voting rights in October 27 elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Ilana Mittman, a retired social scientist with American and Israeli citizenship, began arranging a trip to Israel from her home in Baltimore, she planned to observe her late father\u2019s Yahrzeit and cast her ballot in the national elections on Oct. 27<\/a>. Checking her voter registration status online, she made a startling discovery: She had been excluded from the voter registry and was ineligible to vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The discovery came as a shock. Mittman\u2019s mother was born in the British Mandate. Her parents drained swamps to create arable land and served in the Haganah, a pre-state military organization.<\/p>\n

Mittman has lived in the United States since 1980, having moved for her husband\u2019s medical studies and career. But she has never viewed her life abroad as severing her ties to Israel. She watches television in Hebrew, follows the country\u2019s news, stays in frequent contact with family, donates to the country\u2019s emergency services and engages in pro-Israel advocacy efforts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t really choose to leave the country; I fell in love with a man who came from overseas, and I followed him,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve grieved for the loss of my country and my friends\u2026 It\u2019s been a constant, chronic sorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Puzzled by the discovery of her voter status, Mittman reviewed her records through the Interior Ministry online portal and noticed that on March 7, 1986, her residency status had been altered under administrative \u201cCode 51.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"'I‘I didn’t know that my biggest right as a citizen \u2013 the right to vote \u2013 was just robbed from me,’ said Ilana Mittman. (credit: Courtesy of Ilana Mittman)<\/p>\n

That date matched a visit to the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco<\/a> shortly after the birth of her son, where she went to register him as an Israeli citizen in accordance with consular requirements. She said that during that routine appointment, consular staff took away her state-issued ID card without explanation, leaving her with only her passport for foreign travel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember how bad of a feeling it was to give that document away,\u201d Mittman recalled. \u201cI felt I gave a part of myself away when that happened. But I didn\u2019t know that my biggest right as a citizen – the right to vote – was just robbed from me.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she spoke with friends in the expat community, she learned others had found themselves in a similar situation. Some only discovered the after making expensive travel arrangements to return to Israel for the election, since voting must be done in person.<\/p>\n

Trading notes in WhatsApp<\/p>\n

Under Israel\u2019s Basic Law: The Knesset, every Israeli citizen aged 18 or older has the right to vote, unless a court has deprived them of that right. In practice, however, voting is limited to those included in the voter registry.<\/p>\n

Israelis whom the government classifies as nonresidents are assigned a designation known as “Code 51” and removed from the voter registry, even though they retain their citizenship.<\/p>\n

As expats across North America, Europe, Australia and South Africa began to realize in the lead-up to the October vote that they were no longer in the voting registry, they began comparing their experiences in a WhatsApp group that grew to some 120 members.<\/p>\n

Some, like Mittman, had not voted in Israel for decades. Others, like kibbutz-born Ayala Graham, had returned to vote in the previous elections, held just four years ago. Yet others retained their eligibility, such as Graham\u2019s husband, who hadn\u2019t cast a ballot in Israel in four decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy blood is boiling from this situation,\u201d said Graham, who left Israel in 1986. \u201cI am a citizen through and through, and I was very offended by this arbitrary rejection. I feel that in these elections, the situation is even more acute than in 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the grounds for rescinding voting eligibility opaque and no easy path to appeal the exclusion, the disenfranchised Israelis decided to pursue legal action. They are calling the grassroots initiative to restore their voting eligibility \u201cOur Right to Vote – Code 51.\u201d<\/p>\n

To challenge the Code 51 exclusions, the group raised money for legal representation through crowdfunding. They then launched a multi-stage legal strategy to exhaust administrative remedies before escalating to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Represented by attorney Gilead Sher, they submitted a Freedom of Information request to compel the Interior Ministry to disclose the criteria behind the administrative \u201cCode 51\u201d designations. Then they sent letters to the Interior Ministry, the attorney-general, and the Central Elections Commission requesting the immediate restoration of their status.<\/p>\n

The Interior Ministry has not yet responded to the group\u2019s letter about Code 51, the criteria used to remove expats from the voter registry, or the total number of citizens affected by the regulation.<\/p>\n

Interior Ministry spokesperson Yaffa Shai did not address questions about the meaning of Code 51 posed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Instead, she pointed to Israeli election law, which requires voters to be listed in the Population Registry as residents, with an address in Israel, and stressed that the ministry had conducted \u201can extensive multilingual campaign\u201d urging citizens to check their voter status.<\/p>\n

Because the law requires the voting registry to be finalized on Sept. 3, the legal team set a one-week deadline for administrative responses. If the matter remains unresolved, they intend to file an emergency petition directly with the Central Elections Commission and the High Court of Justice<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No official count exists of how many Israeli expats have been excluded from the voter registry. \u201cWe received a rough, totally unofficial estimate of several dozen thousands, out of whom we represent about 120,\u201d said Sher, the lawyer.<\/p>\n

He stressed that the criteria for removing citizens living abroad from the voter registry are also unclear. \u201cOur argument is that whatever this arbitrary Code 51 stands for or signifies, it cannot override the constitutional right to vote,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sher acknowledged the possibility that some expats who travel to Israel to vote may only discover their status on election day. Given the tight timeframe before the election, Sher is seeking both temporary relief and an interim injunction in the petition to ensure eligible citizens are not disenfranchised while the court reviews the bureaucratic procedures.<\/p>\n

\u2018Essentially voter suppression\u2019<\/p>\n

On the West Coast, another Israeli expat, Silicon Valley attorney Rony Sagy, was struck by the arbitrariness of the system, particularly given her past travels to Israel during election cycles.<\/p>\n

For the IDF elite unit veteran, maintaining a close connection to Israel has been consistent over decades of living in the US. Her career as a San Francisco-based lawyer has included serving as a legal bridge between Israeli startups and American tech companies, and she travels to Israel several times a year, renews her passport, and keeps a permanent address in the country.<\/p>\n

\"SupportersSupporters attend the Democrats Party\u2019s campaign launch rally following its primaries ahead of the country\u2019s general elections in Tel Aviv on July 20, 2026. (credit: Ilia Yefimovich\/AFP)<\/p>\n

She suspects that her name was removed from the voter roll following a routine consulate visit for passport renewal sometime in the 1980s, during which she was required to surrender her domestic Israeli ID card. She noted that the experience was difficult enough for someone with deep connections to the country, but the lack of transparency surrounding the act added insult to injury.<\/p>\n

\u201cVoting was always very, very important to me,\u201d Sagy emphasized. \u201cMy understanding was that my voting rights would not be hampered by the confiscation of my ID card. The uneven, unidentified way or form of removing certain people from the voter rolls is essentially voter suppression<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The debate over Israeli citizens\u2019 inability to cast ballots from abroad with limited exceptions (for example, official government representatives stationed abroad) has been ongoing for decades. Proponents of overseas voting note that most Western democracies allow it. Opponents argue that the large number of Israelis living abroad could potentially sway an election, even though those living in Israel bear the consequences of its outcome more directly.<\/p>\n

Public opinion in Israel on overseas voting is split, though polls typically focus on whether expats should be allowed to cast ballots from abroad rather than on whether they should retain their eligibility to vote if their center of life is elsewhere.<\/p>\n

A survey last year by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 51% of Israelis opposed allowing citizens living abroad to vote from overseas, while 39% supported it. Opposition was particularly high among Arab respondents – 55% opposed, 36% supported – relative to Jewish respondents. Among Jewish respondents, opinion was evenly divided, with 45% supporting and 45% opposing overseas voting.<\/p>\n

Attitudes were also strongly associated with respondents\u2019 own willingness to leave the country. Among Israelis considering moving abroad, 52.5% supported overseas voting and 40% opposed it, compared to 34% support and 55% opposition among those not considering leaving Israel.<\/p>\n

Members of the group challenging the denial of their eligibility to vote point to the global economy, which facilitates remote work, as well as the rising number of Israelis who have left the country since Oct. 7, 2023, \u00a0due to Israel\u2019s enmeshment in several regional wars. Some have deliberately chosen to disconnect. Mittman, however, believes that the number of years spent living abroad should not define the strength of one\u2019s connection.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean by center of life?\u201d she asks. \u201cIf I spend hours a day immersing myself in Israeli culture, if I am supporting friends and relatives in Israel and charitable causes in every way I can\u2026 I feel that my heart is there, that I\u2019ve never ceased to be an Israeli. So, what does it mean to be a citizen if you cannot vote?\u201d<\/p>\n

She insisted that this initiative to restore expats\u2019 voting rights is not partisan: \u201cIf somebody told me today that I can vote, I don\u2019t know who I\u2019m going to vote for. I have not decided.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regardless of whether the legal challenges are resolved ahead of the election, she plans to make the trip and spend Election Day volunteering to help elderly and mobility-impaired voters reach their polling stations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Ilana Mittman, a retired social scientist with American and Israeli citizenship, began arranging a trip to Israel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[147752,1903,4410,65443,85,46,58195,43,265511],"class_list":["post-598941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-2026-israeli-elections","tag-diaspora","tag-elections","tag-expat","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-elections-2026","tag-news","tag-voter-suppression"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}