Voting commenced Sunday for IDF soldiers, two days before everyone else in Israel gets to choose who will lead the country. Voting for soldiers will continue through the end of election day, in order to enable all soldiers to exercise their right to vote, even if they are currently in the field and will not be able to get back to base on Sunday.

The elections are monitored by teams of officers, who record the name and ID number of soldiers who have voted on base. That information is then uploaded to a database, and they are marked off as having voted on the local election rolls in their home communities, which will be delivered early Tuesday. Soldiers’ votes are also often collected and counted several days after Election Day, because they can be collected only by armored and bonded trucks, to ensure that there is no vote tampering.