Of all the challenges the 25th Knesset posed to the body that referees national elections in Israel, the most potent may have been its very survival for four years, a rare and unexpected feat.
Managing a countrywide ballot for the first time since 2022, the Central Elections Committee is facing a radically different landscape from the one that was in place the last time Israelis voted.
For one thing, there are the 600,000 voters who became citizens or turned 18 since November 2022.
And there is the spread of artificial intelligence, which has made it easier than ever to mislead voters. When Israelis last went to the polls, ChatGPT was still a month away from becoming publicly available.
Polarization in society is an ever-present issue, but in the last four years it has metastasized in ways seemingly never seen before.
