Sharp rise in voter registration among Israeli-Americans

Hillel Shenker hasn't voted in an American election since immigrating to Israel more than 40 years ago, but that's about to change for the former New Yorker, who has already requested an absentee ballot form and looks forward to casting his vote come November.

"My original view was that I had come to `become an Israeli,' and as such, even though I remained a dual citizen, I thought my political life should be lived solely as an Israeli," he wrote recently in an e-mail to graduates of his Zionist youth movement, many of whom now live in Israel. "Bush, globalization and changes in Israeli society have convinced me to change my view... As we saw in 2000, every vote counts, and even if what I'm doing is only symbolic, other overseas votes in key states may make the difference."

Shenker is just one example of this growing trend among Americans living in Israel, who according to leading political activists here, have shown an unprecedented interest in the outcome of this presidential election.

"People are coming to me and saying that they haven't voted in 20 years, but now want to have their vote count," Mark Zober, chair of Democrats Abroad in Israel, said at a registration drive in Jerusalem this week. Liberal voters, he notes, are outraged by Bush's foreign policy and the war in Iraq, while more conservative American voters point to those same policies as proof of the president's commitment to Israel. In both cases, though, "there's been an urgency for Americans to participate that I've never seen before," he added.

In the 2000 presidential election, an estimated 14,000 Americans living here voted via absentee ballot, and local activists are predicting a sharp increase in numbers this year. The Republicans and the Democrats each say that some 13,000 Americans have requested ballots through their services in the past few months - which doesn't even include those individuals who went to their local consulate or simply downloaded the form from the Internet. There has also been a surge of interest in the American Haredi community here, with some 5,000 new ballots coming from within that voting bloc.

Kory Bardash, chair of Republicans Abroad in Israel, said that he's been inundated with ballot requests recently, and in the past three weeks alone he's submitted an estimated 3,000 forms to the American embassy. "People view this election as one of the most critical elections in their generation and the stakes are very high," Bardash said. "We're talking about the continued and sustained war against Islamic terror and that's not a small issue... In the last election, less than 50 percent of Americans voted, but recently both Republicans and Democrats have seen an energized base."

For more information about upcoming election events and ballot request forms available on-line, see http://il.democratsabroad.org/ or http://www.raisrael.org

	American Israelis registering to vote, this week in Jerusalem. (Tomer Appelbaum / BauBau)