The law proposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud for placing cameras in polling stations in Arab communities fell as fast as it was proposed on Sept. 9. Despite its short life, it raised, in a roundabout way, another important issue: the cost of the election to the Israeli market and its ramifications for the Israeli economy.

A senior official at the Ministry of Economy and Industry who is involved in economic planning and who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity said, “Politicians on all sides should get this. If, God forbid, they won’t succeed in forming a government, and there would be a third election, the Israeli economy would enter a serious, catastrophic crisis, from which it would be very hard to recover.” 

When calculating the economic cost of the election one must consider that election day is a national holiday. How much this holiday costs the market is a complicated question, but according to data from organizations representing the commercial sector, one day off costs NIS 2 billion to NIS 2.5 billion ($560 million to $710 million). Of this amount, at least NIS 1.5 billion ($420 million) represents the loss of income for those workers who do not go in to work and overtime of 200% for those workers who do work on the holiday, such as public transportation workers, communications and critical services workers at hospitals, police and fire departments, and so on. 

This raises a question that must be asked: Is it justified to declare a day off when the voting rate is typically less than 70%? Turnout for the April election was 67.9%.