Midway through the World Zionist Congress elections, the process has been rocked by allegations of voter fraud after the discovery of a large swath of votes linked to suspect emails and prepaid credit cards, according to internal communication acquired by eJewishPhilanthropy. 

“As part of our ongoing monitoring of WZO [World Zionist Organization] voting activity, we have discovered a disturbing pattern of what appears to be orchestrated voting irregularities in significant numbers,” the heads of the Area Election Committee, which oversees the election, wrote in a letter to the 21 slates running in the election.

The nearly 2,000 votes in question — nearly 2% of total votes cast thus far — were all cast for the same two slates. The AEC did not identify which slates, referring to them only as the “subject slates.” The committee gave the slates until Tuesday to provide an explanation for this situation. 

“We are not accusing any slate of anything. But these facts demand an inquiry of the subject slates, which have been given two days (until close of business on Tuesday, April 8,2025), to respond to us with any explanation or other reaction to our notice letter and its attachments, along with their recommendations as to how we should handle this matter,” the chairs of the AEC — retired Judge Abraham Gafni and David J. Butler — wrote in their letter to the other slates.

In order to cast a ballot in the World Zionist Congress election, voters must provide their name, physical address, email address and pay a $5 fee. There is also an option to provide a phone number. Slates are strictly prohibited from paying the voting fees or otherwise compensating voters for these fees. 

The suspect votes were all cast within the last three weeks — in some cases, large numbers of votes were cast within minutes of each other — and included some combination of the same four irregularities: a suspicious email address; a prepaid credit card or other non-personalized credit facility to pay the fee; the same home address; and no listed phone number.

Around half of the registrations flagged by the AEC were tied to variations of the same 50 email addresses — in many cases the same base email address with a different number at the end of it. Many of these also shared the same six physical locations whose addresses match yeshivas across New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland, including 430 of them that were tied to a K-8 yeshiva day school in Brooklyn. The prepaid credit cards were all issued by the same two providers: TransPecos Bank and Pathward.

“This kind of activity threatens the integrity of the entire election process. It also raises serious questions about the subject slates’ knowledge, allowance, encouragement or blind eye toward repeated patterns of deliberately fraudulent activity to increase vote numbers in the election,” the AEC chairs wrote. “These are not isolated instances of innocent misconduct or overzealous mischief by a few slate supporters. The attached materials show a very deliberate, carefully orchestrated and relatively costly scheme to manufacture votes and defraud the process.” 

At $5 a vote, it would cost at least $10,000 to cover the costs of the votes that have so far been flagged by the AEC. 

This incident comes as voter turnout in the 2025 election surpasses the record-breaking 120,000 votes cast during the last election in 2020. This year, that number is on track to increase significantly by the time voting ends on May 4.  

“We have no comment while the matter is under investigation,” Herbert Block, the American Zionist Movement’s executive director, told eJP. “AZM is dedicated to ensuring a fair and transparent election and vigilant in identifying and stopping any fraudulent behavior. Voter turnout has reached unprecedented heights halfway through this year’s World Zionist Congress election.” 

Three weeks ago, the WZC documented another potential breach of its voting regulations when the Am Yisrael Chai slate was accused by other slates of improper recruiting practices after offering incentives to recruit voters. And last week, Haaretz reported that an Aish Ha’am candidate was found to have been offering to reimburse voters directly for the $5 fee.