Amid heated rhetoric and actions among the slates and candidates, this year’s World Zionist Congress election saw a record turnout in the United States to choose delegates for the so-called Jewish people’s parliament, with nearly double the voters from five years ago and around quadruple what it was a decade ago.

“This is not a winner-take-all election,” Herbert Block, executive director of the American Zionist Movement, which administered the election, told JNS. “Everyone will have a seat at the table.”

Of the record 22 slates, or parties, running this year, 21 appear to have qualified for at least one mandate per preliminary results released on June 5.

The congress does not have governing coalitions or opposition parties like in traditional politics, which means that it will bring all of the global delegates together in Jerusalem in late October to vote on critical appropriations and policy priorities for major Zionist institutions, in a process conducted once every four or five years. Heading into October, the slates, fragmented more than ever down specific agenda lines, will look to coalesce on issues, like yeshiva funding, campus outreach and security, to maximize their leverage.

“It will take a little bit of time for things to settle down and people to figure out where their alliances are,” Block told JNS. “We’re pleased that more people than ever participated in one of these elections. There’s really nothing like it in terms of a grassroots representative Jewish democracy.”

The Orthodox slates made a second consecutive strong showing, with Am Yisrael Chai (31,765 votes), Eretz Hakodesh (29,159), Orthodox Israel Coalition (26,975), Aish Ha’am (6,649), Shas (2,658) and Dorshei Torah V’Tzion (1,946) securing about 43% of the vote. Right-wing slates are expected to take around 81 mandates, compared with 71 for left and center slates.

JNS asked Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman emeritus of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, if the jump in numbers is a result of greater Orthodox involvement in Zionist causes post-Oct. 7, or reflective of broader gains by Orthodox sects in the Jewish American population.

“Yes, and yes,” Hoenlein told JNS. The congress is “still pretty obscure to most people,” Hoenlein told JNS. He noted that only about 5% of U.S. Orthodox Jews cast a ballot, despite the record turnout.

“I think that Oct. 7 heightened awareness in general, and there were more serious efforts to increase it from the last one to now,” Hoenlein said. “Certainly in Orthodox communities, it was never a big issue until the last time, when Eretz Hakodesh raised the profile and other groups started to organize in a more serious way, and it brought a lot of attention,” Hoenlein said. (He previously told JNS that Orthodox Jews are, “in many respects,” better organized than their non-Orthodox peers.)

The vote split this year due to the large number of slates, which jumped more than 50% from 14 in the 2020 election to 22 in the most recent one. JNS asked Block if there is a concern that consensus will become difficult or near impossible in the future.

“Get back to me in a few months,” he told JNS with a laugh. “There are a lot of people who will try to find their niche. I’m sure people will look and see more slates on their side of the ideological spectrum. Will it get more people out, because they reached a new niche constituency and got, or did it splinter their vote?” he said. “I’m sure different people will have different conclusions on that, and it will be interesting to see how that plays out for the future.”

Slates that win seats in a U.S. election of the congress are supposed to be members of Block’s American Zionist Movement. “The reason for that is that it’s not just to run a campaign, get your seats and then disappear and come back and campaign again in four or five years,” he told JNS. “It’s built into the system that people need to stay engaged.”

He continued, “There’s a lot that we can come together around and bring strength to all the diverse parts of our community, for programming, for advocacy,” he said. “That will be one of our challenges.”

The American Zionist Movement’s theme is “Zionism together.” Block encouraged varied slates to “come together and figure out how we work together to be a voice for all for Zionism, to combat anti-Zionism and to use our collective strengths for things that are important. Everyone will have their own viewpoints on certain matters, but there’s a lot of things that we’ll be united on,” he said.

Hoenlein told JNS that one of his hopes is that “people will sustain the level of interest in what the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency, and all of them do and see how we can play a more constructive role together.” That’s particularly important “with the immense demands being made on the people and institutions of Israel,” he said. (The WZO is the parent company of the congress.)

“The costs are going to be great, so the obligation doesn’t end with casting a ballot,” Hoenlein said. “It begins with that.”

Though individual voters might have experienced an “online glitch,” the election ran smoothly despite the large increase in turnout, according to Block.

“As reflected in the outcome and the turnout, the system worked, and you could see from the campaign activity that a lot of people were engaged,” he said. He also said that it was “unfortunate” that a large number of suspicious votes had to be thrown out, including prepaid credit card use, randomly-generated email addresses and mailing addresses that raised concern.

“Those votes that were invalidly or improperly obtained were stricken,” he said.

Block told JNS that the congress is still discussing what, if any, punishments to mete out.

“That’s going to be something the committee will be reviewing in the coming weeks, and to look at what kind of sanctions or penalties will be put in place,” he said, “either to address slates if they’re found to be connected to the fraudulent activity, and also to serve as a disincentive before the next election.”