From Mount Hermon in Syria to the West Bank of the Suez Canal, soldiers voted yesterday in Army units spread along the cease fire lines. Mild weather prevailed except in the north. But a snow storm in the Golan Heights presented no serious obstacle to the mobile polling stations moving swiftly from unit to unit, from fortification to fortification and from remote position to remote position. No soldier was deprived of the opportunity to vote.
Ballots were cast in the shade of a tank, while others under the camouflaged field guns, on dirt roads, on sand dunes or on rocky terrain. Soldiers voted their weapons put aside for a moment, and then returned to their posts. By midnight almost all units had completed voting and the polls were sent by sea, air and land to the Knesset in Jerusalem where the checking and counting will be made.
A few units will complete their voting today. The voting went smoothly. There were no untoward incidents although in some areas voting took place within the sound of gunfire. But this did not interfere with the voting.
The final results of the soldiers’ vote will not be known until next week because the process of counting them takes longer than civilian votes. All ballots cast by soldiers must be checked against their records or other data to confirm their identity. Opening the soldiers’ ballots is also a laborious process because they are double-wrapped in two envelopes. The final results of the civilian vote should be known some time tomorrow.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
