Election Committee Allows Parties Real-Time Voter Reporting, Reversing Ban

The Central Elections Committee has reversed a previous decision by its chairman, Judge Noam Sohlberg, that banned parties from using real-time reporting systems from polling stations. The committee's new ruling allows parties to transmit information about voters as they cast their ballots, including through applications like "Elector."

The issue reached the committee following a petition filed by the Likud party to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had deferred the decision to the Elections Committee. Last week, Justices Yael Willner, Alex Stein, and Khaled Kebub heard the petition against the ban on monitoring at polling stations, during which Likud demanded permission to receive real-time voting data on election day.

Likud's representative, attorney Ilan Bombach, had strongly criticized Sohlberg's initial ban, calling it a "terror attack" that would cause "enormous damage" to the party. He argued that Likud, as a long-standing party with a large voter base, should be able to utilize its existing data and dedicated software for election day operations.

Member of Knesset (MK) Simcha Rothman also commented, drawing a parallel between searching a phone and the practice of reporting voter turnout, suggesting the latter was less invasive of privacy. Sohlberg's original decision had classified voting status and its circumstances as private information protected by privacy laws, arguing that requiring such information to vote infringes on a person's ability to choose whether to reveal their private details. He also stated that information accessed by poll workers and observers was for election integrity, not for political mobilization.

The committee's reversal means that party representatives at polling stations will now be permitted to relay information about who has voted to their respective parties, even through applications. The matter is expected to return to the Supreme Court this week for further review.