The first national election in מדינת ישראל MEDINAT YISRAʾEL chose the Constituent Assembly.

The ordinance set direct, equal, secret and proportional elections. Section 4 included men and women aged eighteen by December 31, 1948, with specified presence and registration requirements. It required ordinary voters to have been in the electoral territory on November 8 and registered by November 30. Those boundaries matter when considering displaced Arab residents and refugees. Representative government did not mean every former resident had access to its first ballot.

Section 6 expressly addressed military voters:

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חייל בצבא־הגנה לישראל זכאי לבחור אם נתקיים בו תנאי סעיף 4 לפקודה זו, וזכאי להיבחר אם נתקיימו בו תנאי סעיף 5 לפקודה זו.³

TJD translation:

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A soldier in the Israel Defense Forces is entitled to vote if the conditions of section 4 of this ordinance are fulfilled in his case, and entitled to be elected if the conditions of section 5 are fulfilled.⁴

The separate December 16 military-voting ordinance provided special machinery for those ballots. דוד בן-גוריון DAVID BEN-GURION’s January 26 diary discusses military returns still outstanding. These sources contradict the exclusion of soldiers alleged in the supplied transcription of a January 25 Le Monde report. The French page returned an access challenge, so its exact wording and context remain uncollated.⁵⁶

Meir Chazan’s study identifies the voters whom parties especially sought:

The key competition in the election was for the votes of two main target audiences: new immigrants and soldiers.⁷

This makes military voting central to the political history, rather than a technical exception. It also connects the ballot to communities transformed by war and עלייה ALIYA. Party competition concerned the future exercise of power by יהודים YEHUDIM, including military aims, economic organization and relations with other governments.

The later results table records 506,567 eligible voters and 434,684 valid votes. Twenty-one lists competed and twelve won seats. מפא״י MAPAI won 46 seats, מפ״ם MAPAM 19, the United Religious Front 16 and חרות ḤERUT 14. The Democratic List of Nazareth won two and the Communist Party four. These demonstrate plural political participation, including Arab representation; they do not measure registration access for excluded people.⁸

These are final historical results, not totals already available on January 25. They belong beside the Day 423 account, while the following days preserve the incomplete counting and coalition discussions.

The existing calendar check places the election on January 25, 1949, converted at daytime to כ״ד בטבת ה׳תש״ט 24th 𝑜𝑓 Tevet, AM 5709. Official historical election accounts and Ben-Gurion’s January 26 reference to voting yesterday corroborate that civil date. Evening voting could fall on כ״ה בטבת ה׳תש״ט 25th 𝑜𝑓 Tevet, AM 5709; the article does not claim every ballot was cast before sunset. The legislature’s later renaming and final results are subsequent developments, not polling-day actions.⁹¹⁰

• How do military-voting provisions test the foreign report’s exclusion claim?
• How did wartime registration boundaries shape who could exercise electoral authority?