Several American Zionist organizations have accused the American Zionist Federation (AZF) of bias and inconsistency in the penalties it levelled against their slates in the recently concluded elections to the 31st World Zionist Congress.
Penalties were a direct result of the findings of Equifax, an independent auditing firm hired by AZF, which administered the American elections. Veteran Zionists said the Equifax audits of the 14 Zionist organizations’ membership in this election were the strictest they could remember.
Equifax took a random sample of two percent of each organization’s membership list and checked that:
Membership could be verified with appropriate documentation.
Total dues received matched the number of members on lists submitted to the AZF and corresponded to the amount of dues reportedly paid.
The “member” joined willingly and knowingly and with individual applications, especially in the case of group memberships.
Membership applications complied with other election rules including each member’s documented acceptance of the Jerusalem Program.
On 10 percent of each two percent sample, Equifax ran a more thorough check, actually tracing dues payments directly to an individual member.
RATIONALE REVEALED
The penalties translated into some substantial losses of mandates for the slates of three organizations, the Zionist Student Movement (ZSM), Religious Zionists of America (RZA) and Americans for Progressive Israel (API). The Equifax report, distributed to each organization involved after the election results were announced last week, provided the rationale behind the increasingly controversial penalties.
The newly formed Zionist Student Movement would have received one seat, but lost it after a 100 percent penalty because it had no financial records, according to the Equifax report. RZA, which ran on the Religious Zionist Movement slate with Emunah and Amit women suffered heavy losses, with a 100 percent penalty. Its slate lost 13 of 27 mandates.
According to the Equifax report, the audit covered 3,438 RZA members, or two percent of RZA’s declared 169,484 members.
In every case, Equifax found discrepancies. “The number of discrepancies is a result of the fact that only 2,159 membership cards were presented for examination and we were unable to line specific dues payments deposits to membership financial records,” the report said.
Equifax also checked RZA’s bank records and found that its deposits fell short of the amount of money that would verify its 169,484 members, each paying $18 in dues.
Rabbi Louis Bernstein, RZA chairman, called the election a “sham” and said RZA “expects to go to (a U.S.) court to fight it.” Bernstein said he believed the penalties were aimed at excluding religious Zionists from the Congress. Bernstein also charged that the AZF ran the election improperly by disqualifying votes after the election was finished. “The parties should have been penalized before the voting. The lists should have been invalidated before ballots were sent out,” Bernstein said.
The methods used to penalize slates had effectively disenfranchised the voters who cast the disqualified votes, he said. RZA’s slate lost about 18,840 votes to penalties.
RZA also protested the redistribution of its votes to boost other slates, especially the Reform and Conservative slates, which made impressive showings in the election.
ALSO CHARGES DISENFRANCHISEMENT
The API slate lost three of its four mandates due to an 81 percent penalty. Similarly, API complained that about 75 percent of its supporters were disenfranchised.
The Equifax report said API was penalized because its director “was unable to produce membership applications or other appropriate documentation for 80 percent of total membership.”
Equifax found that these members were “gift members” and that there was no evidence that they were aware of their membership. The director of API told Equifax the gift memberships had been financed by a number of private donors, the report said.
Stephie Kirschner, API director, said she is “not sure uniform procedures were used in the audit.” She claimed that no other organizations were examined or penalized for gift memberships.
There was no prohibition in the election rules against gift memberships. But one of the rules for eligibility to vote stated that a member’s dues must be current.
API has filed an appeal which will be heard before an arbitration board called the Zionist Tribunal. The tribunal is comprised of one lawyer or representative selected by each organization which participated in the election.
INCOMPLETE RECORDS BLAMED
Ray Patt, chairman of the Area Election Committee formed by the AZF to run the election, said most of the organizations were penalized because they did not have sufficient records to back up their membership claims.
Patt discounted the Orthodox party’s claims of bias. “The Orthodox were treated in exactly the same fashion as every other faction. They approved the verification process,” he said. “No one wants Orthodox Zionists out of the movement.”
He added that all of the organizations agreed to abide by the findings of the Equifax report before it was released.
The issue of gift memberships will be decided in the tribunal, Patt said. He refused to elaborate on the committee’s position on this issue. All appeals will be heard within a month of filing the complaint under the AZF election rules. RZA has not yet made a formal appeal.
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.
