The official results in the Haifa municipal elections announced Monday award the mayoralty to incumbent Labor Party Mayor Arye Gurel.
Gurel won with 42.31 percent of the 100,000 valid votes cast, almost 4 percent ahead of his Likud rival, Rami Dotan, who got 38.38 percent.
But Dotan and the Likud party, described by Labor as “bad losers,” are not giving up easily.
They and representatives of other contending parties — the Communists and the religious front — have refused to sign the official protocol of the results. Likud is preparing to ask the High Court of Justice to throw out the election results because of irregularities.
Shinui candidate Yehudit Naot took third place, with 12.99 percent, and two other candidates got under 2.5 percent each of the direct vote for the mayor post.
Of the 105,392 votes cast, 5,610 were disqualified. Likud has claimed that the number of disqualified votes was “unusually large,” and that most of them had voted for their candidates.
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