Tomorrow, March 23, will be the second time Israel votes while the coronavirus pandemic is raging. With a successful vaccination campaign, the country started opening up again in the past few days and the number of new contamination cases keeps dropping. Nevertheless, thousands are still isolated over contact with virus carriers and thousands are considered sick. Thus, the Central Elections Committee is putting in place special measures for election day.

According to recent assessments, some 12,000 people eligible to vote would be considered sick with the coronavirus and some 39,000 would still be in isolation on March 23. In order to protect the population, the committee decided to open special polling stations for these voters in every town and village. Taxis will take the sick and quarantined to vote.

Evidently, the committee does not know how many of them will actually come to vote. It is thus difficult to estimate how voting will really roll on. The great fear is for long lines to form in these special 751 polling stations (out of 13,035 across Israel). The committee is also worried that the change of venue will confuse some of the voters, who were used to vote at polling stations near their house all their adult lives.

One solution agreed upon is to deploy drones. The drones will hover above the polling stations and the main traffic axes leading there, sending images of the queues forming outside to the Central Elections Committee down on the ground. If the drone handlers see that the lines outside a special station are too long, voters registered with that station will be sent to another one.