High Court rules polling station officials can’t transmit voter data to parties on election day

The High Court of Justice has barred partisan polling station officials and observers from using digital tools to count the number of people who have voted on election day and transmit that information in real time to the parties they represent.

Thursday’s High Court decision by a three-judge panel came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party requested that such officials be able to do periodic counts of voters and hand that information to their respective campaigns.

Acting Central Election Committee director Dean Livne approved the request, but petitions were filed against it, first to the CEC itself and then to the High Court of Justice.

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In a decision last month, the court barred party-appointed polling station officials from transmitting data to campaign headquarters identifying which voters have cast their ballots in real time.

Justices Chaled Kabub and Ruth Ronnen ruled in favor of Thursday’s ban on digital vote counting, while Justice David Mintz voted against the ban.

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The reasoning behind the ruling was not provided because of the tight time frame in which the petition was filed, just days before Tuesday’s election. The reasoning will be issued at a later date.

The ruling comes against the backdrop of efforts by Likud to track voter turnout in order to improve its get-out-the-vote campaign on election day, despite the High Court ruling in September.

Earlier this week, in the framework of the petitions against counting votes, a former Likud campaign official warned in a sworn affidavit submitted to the High Court and the attorney general that a new election day app developed by Likud, called Victory 26, included a feature that allows users to secretly listen to and monitor activity at polling stations, and collect detailed information about voters’ identities.

Israel Democracy Guard, a nonprofit that petitioned the High Court, argued that this would violate laws against clandestine listening devices and circumvent the High Court’s September ruling.

The nonprofit welcomed Thursday’s decision, saying that polling station officials “perform a public, politically neutral role on election day—and do not serve as an operational arm of political party headquarters.”

The organization said that the ruling would prevent polling stations from being transformed into sources of real-time information for political parties.

“It is now incumbent upon the Central Elections Committee to ensure that the guidelines provided to all personnel at polling stations are clear, uniform, and enforceable,” the group added.

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