Israeli parties will be able to track who has voted in real time, election panel rules

Likud-backed proposal includes limits on how voter information may be collected and used; High Court will return to privacy dispute on Wednesday.

The Central Elections Committee voted on Sunday to allow party representatives inside polling stations to report in real time which voters have cast ballots, restoring - for now - a central part of parties’ Election Day turnout operations ahead of the October 27 election.

The information at issue does not reveal how anyone voted, which remains secret. What it does do is tell parties whether a particular person has voted or not. Campaigns can compare that information with their databases and concentrate calls, messages, home visits, and transportation efforts on likely supporters who have not yet reached the polls.

Sunday’s decision is not the final legal word. The High Court of Justice will resume hearing Likud’s petition at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, after the parties update the court on the committee’s decision.

The full committee approved the proposal by 19 votes to 11, with three abstentions, departing from the position of committee chairman and Supreme Court Deputy President Noam Sohlberg, who ruled in August that transferring identified voter information to political parties was prohibited.

Under the committee’s decision, the reporting will be allowed only under restrictions: Information may not be transferred from special polling stations, parties may not record when an individual voted, and the data may be used only to encourage voter turnout.

Information must be destroyed after the election

The information may not be transferred to another party or outside body and must be destroyed after the election.

The proposal was presented by attorney Ilan Bombach, who represents Likud in the proceedings. The committee is composed primarily of political-party representatives, with seats allocated according to the factions in the outgoing Knesset; the coalition holds a majority.

The court has not ruled that Sohlberg lacked the authority to impose the original ban. Instead, an arrangement approved last Thursday transferred the underlying question to the full committee for a fresh decision, with Sohlberg’s rulings placed before it as his legal opinion.

That allowed the court to bypass the authority dispute for the time being. Now that the committee has permitted the practice, the central question is expected to become whether its decision complies with privacy and election law.

Wednesday’s hearing will proceed as though the court has already issued a conditional order requiring the respondents to justify their position. In practical terms, that allows the case to move directly into substantive review without another preliminary stage.

Likud has argued that this system has operated openly for several election cycles and is essential to its ability to bring supporters to the polls. It said Sohlberg’s original prohibition was imposed after parties had already planned their campaigns around the practice and that aggregate turnout figures could not replace identified reporting.

The privacy concern extends beyond the secrecy of the ballot

Sohlberg, the attorney-general, and the Privacy Protection Authority took the opposite position. They argued that information entrusted to polling-station officials for administering and supervising the election cannot be repurposed for political-party operations without legal authorization.

Sohlberg found that whether a person voted, when they voted, and the circumstances of their vote constitute personal information. He ruled that the fact that parties had used the information in previous elections did not make its transfer lawful.

The privacy concern extends beyond the secrecy of the ballot. Information showing that someone voted at a hospital, prison, women’s shelter, or another special polling station could reveal sensitive details about that person even without disclosing their vote. Sunday’s decision seeks to address that concern by excluding special polling stations and prohibiting the transfer of voting times.

Critics maintain that identified information from ordinary polling stations can also become sensitive when combined with party databases. In communities with predictable voting patterns, even the fact that a person voted may support inferences about their political views. Real-time access can also expose voters to targeted pressure or repeated approaches before polls close.

Sohlberg had proposed an alternative under which the committee would publish aggregate turnout figures for every ordinary polling station at least four times on Election Day, without identifying individual voters. Sunday’s decision instead preserves identified reporting under the new restrictions.

The parties must now explain to the High Court how the committee’s decision affects their positions. The justices may then determine whether the safeguards are sufficient or whether identified voter reporting remains incompatible with privacy and election law.